Political Architecture: Contextual Development and Opposition to Housing

American cities face a housing affordability crisis, partly because of public opposition to dense housing. Explanations have focused on property values, congestion, or demographics. This literature neglects a factor familiar to urban planners: architecture. We argue that people have contextual development preferences and oppose developments that don’t “fit” the surrounding neighborhood in height and style. We test this hypothesis with survey experiments employing a novel visual approach with tightly controlled but realistic images of buildings and neighborhoods. We find that buildings which fit are supported more, an effect which isolates the interaction of building architecture and context. The effect holds for homeowners and renters, and urbanites and suburbanites, suggesting it is not driven by concerns over property values or density alone. Moreover, buildings that don’t fit prompt intentions to engage in costly political behavior. When we impose trade-offs, support drops, but remains high, suggesting contextual fit preferences are meaningful.