Monomial localizations and polymatroidal ideals

In this paper we consider monomial localizations of monomial ideals and conjecture that a monomial ideal is polymatroidal if and only if all its monomial localizations have a linear resolution. The conjecture is proved for squarefree monomial ideals where it is equivalent to a well-known characterization of matroids. We prove our conjecture in many other special cases. We also introduce the concept of componentwise polymatroidal ideals and extend several of the results, known for polymatroidal ideals, to this new class of ideals.