Ingrid Ellen

Ingrid Ellen will work on a book examining neighborhood policies in the United States. She will focus on how neighborhood policies have weighed the preferences of incumbent residents against the interests of potential future residents and broader societal goals—tensions that can often be seen across the country in NIMBY (not in my backyard) versus YIMBY (yes in my backyard) debates. Ellen will evaluate neighborhood policy initiatives from the 1910s through the 21^st century. She argues that these policies have rarely struck an appropriate balance between these groups and that, over the last 100 years, policies have primarily favored incumbent residents, especially in higher-income neighborhoods.