The Significance of Spatial and Contextual Factors for Residential Mobility

Abstract

Residential mobility is a social force with the capacity to change cities by altering or renovating their social and demographic structures. However, this is a two-sided connection, as the contexts also shape and change the population’s decisions on mobility. Current explanations of residential mobility use individual and household variables regarding their characteristics, structures and housing situation. Our goal is to measure the role of spatial variables once we control for the abovementioned factors (classifying the moves into two types: inside and outside the municipality), and to assess the importance of the different internal dynamics of the metropolitan city. In the first part of the paper, two multinomial logit models are used to determine the effect of metropolitan contexts on individual mobility. In the second part, linear models of overall mobility in the metropolitan areas are used to assess their relevant features for residential mobility. The main finding of our research is the measurement of the boosting effect of living in a metropolitan city on residential mobility, after controlling for individual and housing variables (especially in moves out of the municipality). Data on the variations between metropolitan areas allow us to explain the changes in moves inside the municipality, as they are connected to the general dynamism of the city. Moves between municipalities, on the other hand, are linked to the social/ demographic structure and the local housing markets in each area, and therefore have a closer link to the local context.