Where I'm from we have a extremely vocal minority that we call the Citizens Against Virtually Everything or CAVE for short. These CAVE people will come out of the woodworks and protest every single thing that could have a positive effect on the area. An amusement park? Hell no, CAVE people are coming out to protest. Get nominated for a national title? Here they come again saying the area doesn't deserve it!

So I'm wondering if this is just a localized thing or if every community has these extremely vocal CAVE people?

In the small town of 4000 people where I used to live, we did not have CAVE people. Now, for Omaha? I'm not so sure. I'm sure there's just a handful of them out of the over 700k that live here, at the very least.

We tried to build a play park in our neighborhood but CAVEs came out and destroyed the initiative for god know what reason.

Screw that and screw CAVE people

There are old people here that opposed the construction of a new bus shelter

I believe one of the worst places where I have lived from that point of view is Brighton (UK). The West Pier risked to be lost forever because people opposed every project to rescue it.
A good place seems to be Leeds: AFAIK, people do not oppose plans to improve the city.

Well you couldn't make Leeds any worse, dropping a bomb in the city centre would probably go some way to improving it.

And yet I believed that Leeds had changed a lot in the last 20 years or so...
I don't find it a bad place at all.