HABITAT · How European Big Cities and Legal Systems Trigger Urban Inequality: An Inquiry into Law and Economics

HABITAT is based on a groundbreaking research hypothesis (GbRH): socioeconomic inequality in major European cities is largely due to a history of regulatory failures of urban legal systems. Urban legal systems have played a central causal role in concentrating wealth and, conversely, they have failed as much as the economic system in protecting vulnerable residents from growing socioeconomic inequality in major EU cities. To test this GbRH, the Principal Investigator (PI) and his team address the main forms of urban inequality from a law and economics perspective. HABITAT measures the impact of laws and judicial decisions that, by hypothesis, have triggered urban inequalities. European urban legal systems made middle and bottom deciles, underprivileged minorities, migrants, and women worse. HABITAT tests this GbRH through a case study approach, considering Berlin, London, Milan, and Paris. The PI proposes unprecedented and unique legal research, grounded on rigorous data analysis and a robust, cutting-edge methodology that combines: a) the evolutionary analysis of legal orders, with a focus on the legal determinants of the built environment; b) the comparative analysis of the common core of urban legal systems; c) a regulatory impact assessment through econometrics, statistics, and data analysis; d) an evidence- and process- based normative model, for the design of just cities from a legal and conceptual perspective, tested through scenario analysis.