Why Some Cities Go Further Than National Government Demands–and Others Don’t
Anders Leth Nielsen (Aarhus University)
When national governments make new policies, they often rely on cities to carry them out. But cities are not passive delivery machines. They have elected councils, local priorities, and their own understanding of what is needed locally. So, what happens when what the national government wants conflicts with what the city council has already decided to do?
In 2018, the Danish government introduced new legislation requiring ten cities to physically transform fifteen designated social housing areas by 2030. The areas were placed on a so-called "ghetto list" based on criteria related to residents’ unemployment, education, income, crime, and ethnic composition. The national mandate was identical for all cities: To make plans with the housing organisations to reduce the share of social housing in each area to a maximum of 40%. If they failed, the state reserved the right to take over the areas entirely.
The stakes were high for residents potentially having to move–perhaps even having their home demolished–as well as for housing associations and local politicians. Notably, despite many similarities, the cities responded in strikingly different ways. Cities like Aarhus and Odense embraced the law and drew up radical transformation plans involving large-scale demolitions and new construction. On the other hand, Kolding and Vejle pushed back, applied for dispensation, and kept physical change to existing housing to the bare minimum. What explains this variation when the demands were identical?
My argument is that how a city responds to national policy comes down to what I call "local fit". Local fit has two components. The first is city council interest: has the council already decided, on its own initiative, to pursue physical transformation? If the answer is yes, national policy supports existing local goals and is welcomed as a useful tool. If the answer is no, the national demand contradicts local political goals. The second component is local implementation conditions: are the practical circumstances facilitating or not? Specifically, has the housing area recently been renovated—making transformation both costly and politically wasteful? And did the city administration have sufficient professional capacity such as planners, architects, and social science academics to make and manage a decade-long transformation process? When conditions are facilitating and the council already wants transformation, the result is ambitious, sometimes even beyond national minimum demands. When conditions, on the other hand, are constraining and the council has not already embarked on a transformation trajectory, the result is resistance and minimal disruption.
The empirical evidence from all fifteen housing areas supports this. Areas with high local fit–where the council had prior transformation plans and conditions were facilitating–produced plans that were twice as transformative as areas with low local fit–where the council had no prior transformation plans and conditions were constraining. In the article, I further analyse three cities in more detail. Here I go beyond the clear cross-case pattern to investigate what actually went on in local decision-making processes. To do so, I draw on over 13,000 pages of internal documents from the cities, which I combine with eleven interviews with politicians and civil servants. This confirms that indeed cities’ choice of customisation strategy can be explained by city council interests and local implementation conditions.
Aarhus had been transforming its Gellerup area since 2007. When the national law arrived, city officials “welcomed it with open arms.” The new legislation gave them the leverage to continue what they had already started and to make a transformative plan for the neighbouring Bispehaven area. The result was a plan that exceeded the national target, aiming for just 32% social housing. Kolding, by contrast, had no transformation plans for either of its two designated areas and both had recently been renovated. The mayor publicly declared that Kolding had “no parallel societies” and argued strongly against the new policy. As a result, Kolding tried to minimize physical transformation for both areas. These outcomes could hardly have been more different.
A tempting rival explanation is that the difference reflects party politics: left-leaning councils would protect social housing tenants; right-leaning ones would embrace redevelopment, new private housing, and support the national right-wing government’s political ambitions. But the analysis contradicts this. The four most transformative plans were all adopted by cities with left-leaning mayors. And some of the most reluctant plans were in fact made by right-wing-controlled councils. So, ideology does not explain the variation. Neither does economic self-interest as Paul Peterson famously suggested: cities under financial pressure and those lacking population growth do not systematically make more transformative plans to attract new higher-earning residents. What consistently matters is whether the national policy aligns with the specific prior decisions a council has made about particular housing areas and whether the conditions are favourable or not.
This lesson reaches well beyond Denmark and the field of housing policy. Across countries, national governments push cities to deliver on national ambitions–from climate commitments to social services. The results vary dramatically from one city to the next. My research suggests that what matters is whether national policy complements local ambitions or runs against them. When it aligns with existing local decisions and local conditions, ambitious implementation follows naturally. When it clashes, resistance is the predictable result. For anyone designing national programs that depend on local implementation, this is the finding that should matter most.
Anders Leth Nielsen is currently a research assistant at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. His research focuses on policy-making and implementation across levels of government, with particular emphasis on local policy customization. You can find Anders’ research profile here.