Do you live next door to a municipal politician? In that case, it is less likely that apartment buildings will be built near you. If you don’t do that, the risk is higher so that you will instead have to deal with lifting cranes and construction workers in the immediate area.
– It is clear that politicians place new, unpopular construction projects in areas where they themselves do not live, says Olle Folke, professor of political science at Uppsala University, formerly the Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University, and one of the researchers behind the study
Strikes against equality
In the study, it was found that politicians usually live in affluent areas. This applies to both right-wing and left-wing politicians, but right-wing politicians live to a lesser extent in areas with low-income earners and foreign-born people.
It risks creating patterns where already affluent areas are protected, while less affluent areas receive a higher burden.
Several explanations
According to the researchers, there may be several different reasons why this happens. Among other things, it may be because the politicians have better knowledge of how projects would affect their own areas. It may also be because the politicians want to protect the price of their homes, or want to avoid criticism from their neighbors, the researchers say.
The researchers have examined municipalities where the board won by a small margin, i.e. approximately 40 percent of the country’s municipalities. In those cases, approximately 10 percent fewer multi-family buildings have been approved in the vicinity of politicians from the board.