Mayors strike back: Evidence from upzoning in France

To address rising housing prices, national governments have increasingly sought to relax local land use rules through "upzoning" reforms. Yet the effectiveness of such top-down policies remains uncertain. This paper examines the impact of a reform in France that abolished floor area ratios (FAR) from unique zoning data in the Paris Urban area. We exploit within-municipality variation in pre-reform FAR coverage through a difference-indifferences strategy. We show that local governments opposed upzoning by tightening other regulatory tools -such as maximum heights and building coverage ratios -and denying more building permits. These countervailing responses undermined the deregulatory intent of the reform, resulting in negligible effects on real estate markets. Our findings highlight the political and institutional limits of central government efforts to override local zoning decisions.