New Housing Constructions: Not in my Constituency! The Politics of Building New (Affordable) Homes in Greater London, 2007-2018

The public and academic discourses have prominently pointed to local oppositions, often qualified as “Not in My Back Yard-attitudes” (NIMBYism), to explain why housing is increasingly difficult to build and unaffordable to many, especially dense urban areas. This claim relies on the assumption that “Not in My Back Yard” does translate to “Not in My Constituency” on the political level. Yet research on the politics of planning policies and decisions is rather scant. The paper replaces residents’ preferences in the political and institutional context, relying on the example of Greater London. Using detailed data from the London Development Database (2007-2017), the paper finds solid evidence that the number of housing approvals per ward as well as the share of affordable units are strongly linked to median voter preferences in the constituency, which are estimated using micro-data from the British Social Attitudes Survey (2010, 2014, 2016). While these results support the “NIMBY-Hypothesis”, they are only one part of the story. Regression analysis indicates that party politics and regional planning targets matter as well and may counterbalance local oppositions to new housing constructions.