Back in June, I wrote a column making fun of many of the busybody neighbourhood complaints that make the news, ones I characterized as “petty, whiny jerkiness.”

Exhibit A in that argument was the Cabbagetown fight against a local park splash pad, which some neighbours quoted in press reports imagined as a “Disneyland of Waterworks.” The ne plus ultra of entitled whining in that case was the complaint that the umbrella over the splash pad was to be blue, which “isn’t even a heritage colour,” according to one resident.

Well, in addition to the avalanche of thanks from residents of Cabbagetown and other places that arrived in my inbox, I got a letter from Randy Brown, the man who started the petition against the umbrella. He submitted a petition, the city said it would change the umbrella’s colour, everyone came out “smelling good,” he wrote. “Except for you, with your nasty sniping, self-righteous attitude and black-balling spew,” he said of my “condescending thoughts” and suggested the Star had reached some kind of new low by publishing me.

“I presume you must live in a brown bag in the middle of the road because you don’t care what’s going on around you, except, of course, for putting down the people who do care,” he wrote in closing.

You know, he had a point. Not that I live in a brown bag, exactly — with three kids and two working parents, our house more often resembles a toy-store dumpster colonized by feral Smurfs — but that the obsessive concern of people like him over seemingly petty details is easy to mock sometimes, but it is also part of the reason his neighbourhood has the particular character and strong sense of community it’s famous for.

More broadly applied, I think of this as the NIMBY paradox: that even though hypervigilant neighbours can too often overreact and be toxically afraid of change and difference, they are also very often an indicator species of a great community. Because many of the same impulses that lead someone to (wrong-headedly) kick up a fuss about a homeless shelter or a set of stacked townhouses will also lead them to organize community meetings or set up swap meets and farmer’s markets in their local parks, or lobby politicians for better amenities in their area.

Obviously, some perceived threats are toxic, some are silly and some are real. But what those calling the newspapers and going to the mattresses about those perceived threats have in common is a sense of ownership over their community, and an impulse to vigilantly stand up to try to make it a better place to live. And a big population of people like that is actually among the most valuable resources a neighbourhood can have.

It was, on some level, a not-in-my-backyard movement of Annex residents that prevented Toronto from paving a highway down Spadina Rd., and that has become among the most storied political activist movements in our city’s history. As much as the island airport has become a citywide political issue, the resistance to its expansion has always been driven most forcefully by residents of the Toronto Islands.

Less discussed are the many cases where residents who organize because of their concern about a liquor licence application or a condo proposal don’t win, but do make things better because their opposition spurs a negotiation with local residents.

I remember talking to a condo developer who told me about how one of his condos included housing for low-income people and artists strictly because of discussions with NIMBYs, and he bluntly advised people to fight developers to get the kind of changes that would help build a better community.

Designer Jason Logan has often told the story of how he and others in his neighbourhood who objected to the imposing design of a police station got a building they love instead just by standing up and making their objections and wishes known.

Sometimes this energy is misdirected, and sometimes those involved seem to lack a sense of proportion. Perhaps that’s inevitable when you’re fighting for something you care about.

That’s why there are those of us out here to do our “nasty sniping” when they verge on self-parody or step over the line into city-smothering selfishness.

Perhaps people like me spend too much time doing that and not enough time acknowledging the brighter side of busybodies.

Perhaps, as that Cabbageown correspondent wrote, often I’m “part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

If so, they have their own solutions — the neighbourhoods they love and labour for — to enjoy in consolation.

Great (and less great) moments in Toronto NIMBYism

Many people didn’t want the CN Tower built

You don’t hear about it often, but many Toronto residents and politicians were steadfastly opposed to the construction of the CN Tower. Originally proposed as part of a larger Metro Centre development that would have levelled Union Station, the CN Tower (completed in 1976) was the only part that got built. CN, the crown corporation building the tower, bulldozed ahead with the project despite resistance, but Toronto city council did not even issue building permits until the under-construction tower was already several hundred feet tall. Here’s what the naysayers said at the time:

Pilots predicted the building would eventually be struck by a plane, destroying it and much of the city around it.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Activists feared in general the footprint it occupied and what that meant if the slim architecture proved shoddy, and circulated maps showing the radius of disaster around it that was vulnerable.

Animal lovers were concerned that thousands of birds would fly into it and die. (A justified concern — lighting has traditionally been adjusted seasonally in response to bird migrations.)