Moving in the city: Residential mobility and housing choice within a metropolitan area

This thesis examines how changing demographic trends and emerging technological innovations that allow for a more flexible utilization of residences influence the match between people and residences in Denmark, primarily within urban areas. The thesis consists of four papers investigating different aspects of these developments in relation to changes in either residential mobility or housing choice to various degrees.
The thesis addresses these themes at a time when urban areas have become an increasingly important factor in regional development, attracting many new businesses and residents, and creating the need for greater emphasis to be placed on the match between people and residences. Potentially this can lead to an unequal development of urban areas, with some groups of people losing access to increasingly larger parts of the city. In this light, changes in both demographic composition and the emergence of new types of technology may play an important part in how the future match between people and residences is shaped.
In order to analyse and explain the motives behind changes in residential mobility and housing choice, the thesis combines the frameworks of the life course and housing consumption. The four papers each incorporate their own analytical approaches depending on their respective research questions regarding: i) what characterizes the changing demographic composition of Copenhagen; ii) how sharing economies affect the residential mobility of city dwellers; iii) Airbnb’s influence on housing choice and residential prices; and iv) how family dissolution through the death of a partner affects the survivor’s residential mobility and housing needs.
The relationship in the match between people and residences is not a steady-state phenomenon but is always in flux. However, the findings of the respective papers show that changing patterns in the city’s demographic composition and new technological possibilities are both disrupting current patterns of residential mobility and housing choice, thereby altering the future relationship of the match between people and residences both within and outside urban areas.