> Most NIMBY difficulties stem from the asymmetric nature of the costs and benefits of a new project: a new apartment building, for instance, will benefit a city overall (slightly lowering housing costs and slightly increasing the size of the city’s labor market), but those benefits are diffuse. The costs, on the other hand – traffic, parking, construction disruption – will be borne almost entirely by the surrounding residents, who will thus rationally oppose it.

I have always wondered why we don't structure payments of some form to balance out the local costs of infrastructure etc. NIMBY is rational with the economics as they are; but would you really be as opposed to a local power plant if energy costs for the area near the plant were subsidized by some percentage? Balance out the local costs with a local benefit.