ERC Starting Grant
POLICITY: Understanding Citizen Opposition to Urban Development
POLICITY studies why citizens oppose urban development and how such opposition shapes policy decisions. We examine motivations ranging from environmental and social concerns to perceptions of fairness and personal inconvenience, with a particular focus on aesthetic preferences, how preferences interact with local instituaionts, and the special role played by social housing.
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Organization and project members
About the project
The POLICITY project is funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant and is based at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University.
People
- Martin Vinæs Larsen — Principal Investigator
- Laura Kettel — Postdoc
- Niels Nyholt — Postdoc
- Karoline Kolstad — Postdoc
- Paula Bings — PhD
- Marc Sabatier Hvidkjær — PhD
Publications and outputs
Below is a list of some of the first publications from the project.
- Larsen, Martin Vinæs & Niels Nyholt. Understanding Opposition to Apartment Buildings. PDF Data
- Larsen, Martin Vinæs & Niels Nyholt. Understanding NIMBYism as Local Preservationism. PDF
- Martin Vinæs Larsen and Jacob Nyrup. City Limits: Why Citizen Opposition to Urban Development Becomes Concentrated in Expensive Housing Markets. PDF
- Larsen, Martin Vinæs & Laura Kettel. Reassessing the Effect of Local Control on Land Use Policy: When Smaller Local Governments Permit More Housing. PDF Data
- Marc Sabatier Hvidkjær and Martin Vinæs Larsen Political Representation in Danish Local Government. PDF
- Kettel, Laura. The Political Calculus of Land Use Reform. PDF
- Larsen, Martin Vinæs & Andreas Wiedemann. Constituency Lost: How the Marginalization of Social Housing Residents Undermines Partisan Incentives for Its Provision. PDF
Dissemination and events
In the summer of 2024, we hosted a Housing Policy and Politics workshop to present the project's initial findings and gain inspiration from leading experts in local politics and housing. Over two days in Copenhagen, we engaged in discussions and learned from each other.
We routinely hold shorter project seminars with visitors from outside Aarhus University. Recently, we have hosted David Broockman (UC Berkeley), Rebekah Jones (UC Berkeley), Justin De Benedictis Kessner (Harvard University), Asya Magazinnik (Hertie School), Michael Hankinson (George Washington University), Paavo Monkkonen (UCLA), and Gabriel Lenz (UC Berkeley).
We also travel to present findings from the project. Our work has been shared through talks at the University of Southern California, UC Berkeley, the Hertie School, ETH Zurich, Central European University, and many other institutions. We also present regularly at conferences, including the American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting and the Southern Political Science Association (SPSA) Conference.