The campaign to save it (whatever it is)

We've become a nation so suspicious of change that we now oppose absolutely everything

There are no flies on the Minister for Housing and Regeneration, Mr Perry Barr. Addressing chief executives of the National Housing Federation recently, he shared an acute insight about home building with them. "We can't just have preserved chocolate-box villages," he declared. "We want vibrant villages and towns and that means we don't have a ban on building. Some tough decisions will have to be made. In some planning committees in rural areas there is currently nimbyism."

Who could disagree with him on that? But perhaps he doesn't realise that the trend is not confined to "some planning committees in rural areas". In the trouble-ridden inner city, there is nimbyism too. And this nimbyism is not about preserving "chocolate box villages", but about preserving nasty little traffic junctions, unused buildings on mouldering sites, or the lack of a decent secondary school for miles around.

All these are local issues that I've been asked to sign petitions about, or write off letters of protest about, or attend meetings about, over the past couple of weeks. Presumably I'm not alone in being asked to oppose something or other being built every time the prospect of something new being built arises. This island has to be the nimbyist place in the world.

Across the country, we oppose housing, schools, pedestrianisation, incinerators, re-habs, congestion charging, even, in a particularly nasty stand-off in Scotland, a hospice for terminally-ill children which, its opponents snarled, would ruin a beauty spot. Yet across the country we want electricity, homes, education, space free from traffic, our rubbish taken away, the drug problem dealt with, clear roads, and lovely surroundings for dying children to spend their final days in.

We've become a nation so suspicious of change that we now oppose absolutely everything. However ugly, wasteful, cruel, damaging or unfair the status quo may be, there always seems to be somebody who can raise an impressive petition wishing to maintain it.

In my own little corner of south London, it is generally considered that there is a lack of character in the area, and a sore need for some sort of community focal point. There is some regeneration money available to address this, and a reputable architect has come up with a plan to create a town square next to the Tube station.

The idea is neither revolutionary nor particularly exciting. The short street between the Tube station and the bank will be closed off to traffic, and paved, benches will be positioned around the place and a shock-and-awe-inspiring example of public art will be brought in (if we're very lucky). There are even hopes – whoop-de-do – that some entrepreneurial local might be persuaded to open a café in the square.

What worries those opposed to the scheme is that the streets around this little Trafalgar are something of a rallying point already. Beggars position themselves around the bank's automatic tellers, alcoholics hang out near the off-licence; and both tend to congregate at the Tube station, in their never-ending quest for used one-day Tube passes. How will such ne'er-do-wells ever be got rid of if this scuzzy little interchange is made more attractive for them?

And indeed this might be a genuine problem. After all, it's a genuine problem already. But the hilarious thing about the whole argument is that it is actually the scruffy local off-licence that appears to be leading the campaign against regeneration. Do these purveyors of spirit to be consumed in public not realise that their public-spiritedness is somewhat compromised? Do they not stop to consider though that towers of cut-price super-lagers and shelves full of ultra-cheap wine might be just as big a lure for the layabout class as little bits of concrete laid in a herring-bone pattern?

This is an interesting strain of reverse nimbyism, in which the back yard cannot even be swept for fear that the rats get the idea that it has been done for their comfort and benefit. It's a pity that this counsel of despair may succeed in ensuring that a modest, yet much toiled-over attempt at improving a poor environment falls at the first hurdle.

However, in this neck of the woods we also have straightforward, old-fashioned nimbyism to contend with. While there are quite a few good primary schools in the area, there are no secondary schools which come close to achieving the dizzy heights of "bog standard". But against many odds, a group of parents and others have managed to secure permission, land and funding for a new school to be built, slap bang in this educational wasteland, but sadly also slap-bang in the middle of one of south London's pockets of spectacular affluence.

All was looking hopeful, until some local residents decided that they didn't fancy having schoolchildren walking up and down their precious roads, and have therefore been campaigning hard to stop the school from being built. Presumably they feel that there is no point in sending your own children off to be educated privately, then having to look at other people's children through the drawing-room window.

It is truly staggering that these people prefer many thousands of children to have a hopeless education to the alternative of having to pull the occasional crisp packet out of their front hedge. Then they wonder why the streets are so full of the socially excluded that many people find the concept of public space entirely untenable.

Yet people who condemn such narrowly self-interested behaviour with one breath, sometimes risk endorsing it with the next. There is much support for the new secondary school, of course, at my son's nearby primary school. But at the same time, there is much distrust of a proposition to demolish a disused community centre, and build a five-storey block of flats with underground parking at the end of the street the primary school is on.

Five storeys seems to me to be pretty sensitive, and unlikely to cause much in the way of difficulties. But, apparently, it is "too high"; not because of its actual height, but because all the people living in the flats supposedly would have cars (even though 40 per cent of London households run no car), and this would make traffic around the school (which is next to a major arterial road anyway) more dangerous than it is already. The fact that the area desperately needs new homes seems to have been lost in local worries about parking.

The really crushing thing about all this individually driven opposition is the time and thought and care that it despoils so cavalierly. Certainly in the cases of the school and the town square, many people have given up their time and energy on a voluntary basis, over a period spanning years, in order to try to achieve something that they have every reason to believe will be positive and enhancing to the lives of very many people.

All this work is rejected, again and again, by people whose own involvement with such arduous and sometimes thankless projects rarely goes any further than signing their name next to the word "no", with a self-righteous flourish.

d.orr@independent.co.uk