PIMBY (Pug In My Back Yard) is the newest addition to the Pug Awards program and will play an important part in fulfilling the mandate of the Pugs. Where the Pug Awards "promotes" design excellence, and Pug Ed "educates" students about design, PIMBY is aimed at "facilitating" design excellence through an improved planning process.

A major factor in determining what gets built in our city is the planning process. Unfortunately, the current process is highly politicized and reactionary, creating an environment where quality design is difficult to achieve. In an effort to address this problem, we began looking for ways to help mitigate the conflicts between the various participants including the residents, councilors, city staff, developers and consultants. Fortunately we found a solution in our own back yard. Adam Vaughn has been developing a mapping program in his ward  over the past few years to address just these issues. These maps are planning documents which differ from the cities official plan or zoning maps because they are derived from the direct participation and input of the local community stakeholders. Given that the plan comes before any development proposal and has already been vetted by the community, the developer, staff and designers get a better sense of what the community really wants. The hope is to create an environment of collaboration, positivity and dialogue.

PIMBY will be a continuation of the mapping work that was done in Adam Vaughn’s ward and will extend into new areas of the city. As a neutral body PIMBY will act as a bridge between the various participants in the planning process creating a proactive environment instead of reactionary NIMBYism. Through the collaboration of all participants in the planning process, we have the opportunity to create a built environment in Toronto that lives up to the promise of this world class city.