Nuancing NIMBYism: How regulatory preferences shape public acceptance of housing densification

Housing densification has become a key urban policy strategy in cities worldwide. However, its implementation often sparks political debates and local contestations. Our study uses data from a survey, including a conjoint experiment, with 12,611 residents from six cities (Berlin, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, and Paris) to assess the individual respondents’ acceptance of differently regulated housing densification projects. Specifically, we hypothesize and test the influence of the two dominant explanatory aspects for indivudual acceptance of housing densification. Contrary to our theoretical expectations, respondents’ acceptance seems largely independent of the physical proximity of the proposed housing projects to the individuals‘ homes. Instead, we find that if we consider the implementation of housing densification through different forms of regulation, the classic political divide emerges, with left/liberal respondents showing greater acceptance of regulated housing densification than their right/conservative counterparts. Overall, our findings suggest that we should understand the politicization of urban densification around the forms and degrees to which housing densification is regulated and therefore nuancing and deprioritizing the dominant NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) discourse in public and policy discussions on housing developments.