SÉMINAIRE DE RECHERCHE EN ÉCONOMIE - GATE LYON SAINT-ÉTIENNE : François Lafont

François Lafont (CEASER – INRAE), présentera un séminaire intitulé : An anatomy of land-use litigation in France.

Résumé / abstract  : As cities grow, building in already populated areas becomes central to housing affordability and land preservation. Economic actors compete over land use through regulatory and institutional channels that remain largely opaque. We study these channels by analyzing two decades of construction- and land–use–related litigation in France, using large language models to extract information from over 230,000 administrative court decisions. Most cases are brought by private individuals seeking to protect asset values and to influence the future allocation of development rights. Construction litigation is concentrated in populated or touristy areas whereas land-use regulation litigation is more widespread and also present in rural areas. Housing prices are the strongest determinant: moving from the median to the top decile more than doubles the litigation rate. In large cities, litigation affects on average 6% per- cent of newly authorized housing supply and has a significant impact on construction delays. Planning documents are increasingly contested, predominantly to protect individual building rights, highlighting rising difficulties in land-use planning. Overall, litigation is frequent and represents significant friction, while success rates in courts are low, suggesting inefficiencies and potential scope for negotiation.