ABSTRACT

From dams to landfill sites, and power plants to radioactive waste repositories, the siting of facilities is a veritable minefield of conflicts involving industry, planners, authorities, NGOs and citizens. This penetrating volume examines risk, power and identity in contests over the siting of infrastructure and industrial facilities. Going beyond nimby-ism, experts in a variety of fields bring a multiperspective analysis from science, law and media to case studies from the UK, USA and Europe, and expose the political and cultural dimensions of siting conflicts. In the process they show how place attachment and notions of landscape and local identity play a prominent role in resistance to 'development'. Topics covered include the importance of context in siting controversies, siting methods and social representation, siting conflicts, the importance of institutional thinking in facility siting, risk, industrial encroachment and the sense of place, siting and sacred places, and law and fairness. This book is essential reading for academics in social sciences, policy, planning, law and risk; policy makers, planners and decision makers at all levels of government; business and industry, particularly energy generation, including nuclear and renewables, transportation and large dams; risk assessment professionals; and NGOs and activists.

chapter 1|20 pages

The Importance of Context in Siting Controversies

The Case of High-Level Nuclear Waste Disposal in the US

chapter 3|12 pages

Institutional Thinking in Siting Conflicts

The Case of Stripa Mine

chapter 4|17 pages

Siting Conflicts in Renewable Energy Projects

A Biogas Case Study

chapter 5|17 pages

The Smell of Money

Minor Risks and Olfactory Sensibilities (Anatomy of a Protest)

chapter 6|17 pages

Living with Technological Risk

Industrial Encroachment on Sense of Place

chapter 7|20 pages

Visualizing Place and Belonging

Landscape Redefined in a Swedish Farming Community

chapter 8|17 pages

Shifting Risks

Hoover Dam Bridge Impacts on American Indian Sacred Landscapes

chapter 9|16 pages

The Invention of a Minority

A Case from the Aragónese Pyrenees

chapter 11|12 pages

When Complexity Becomes a Problem

‘Law' and ‘Fairness’ on Separate Tracks in Sweden