The Politics of Suburban Advantage

• In Event: 40821 - Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 8. Inequality and Speculation in Housing Markets

Abstract

The local policies that sustain the ``concentration of advantage'' in America's suburbs remain a durable feature of political geography. While scholars have explained the historical emergence of these policies, existing research offers less insight into how and why they have persisted over time. As such, this paper asks: What are the contemporary political processes that sustain concentrated advantage in America's suburbs? To answer this question, I draw on a mixed-methods study of residential zoning practices. I argue that there is an important \textit{spatial dimension} to density preferences, meaning that suburbanites are distinctly opposed to density and therefore frequently mobilized to preserve the restrictive status quo. First, through survey and in-depth interview evidence, I show that contemporary suburbanites hold distinctly anti-density preferences because of both latent opposition - a sense that pro-density policies do not address suburban homeowners’ subjective conceptions of the housing crisis - and active opposition - concerns that pro-density policies represent urban encroachment into historically protected “suburban” ways of life. Second, drawing on an original dataset of residential zoning ballot measures in California and a Regression Discontinuity design, I illustrate the policy consequences of suburban opposition: less housing. Taken together, the findings reveal the importance of this previously overlooked spatial dimension of density preferences: suburbanites continue to oppose density, and when residents with anti-density preferences are concentrated within municipal boundaries, they can mobilize to prevent density, thereby sustaining spatial inequalities between suburbs and cities.

Author

• Stephanie Lynn Ternullo, Harvard University