Special Issue "Counter Urban Migration, Commuting, and Social Sustainability in Everyday Life"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Urban and Rural Development".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2022.

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Erika Sandow
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography, Umeå University, 90187 Umeå, Sweden
Interests: population mobility; internal migration; commuting strategies; work-life balance
Dr. Emma Lundholm
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Geography, Umeå University, 90187 Umeå, Sweden
Interests: internal migration; family networks; counterurbanisation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Were you live and work shapes your daily mobility and your organization of everyday life. Relocation to new place of residence or a new workplace changes mobility patterns and can be a strategy to improve the social sustainability of daily life, which includes work–life balance and a good quality of life. In recent decades, the labor market has developed toward more flexible working conditions regarding working hours and remote work. In combination with increasing prices on the housing market in urban areas, this development has created new spatial conditions in which people manage their daily life in rural and urban areas. A development where work becomes less tied to a geographical location could facilitate counter-urban migration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization of everyday life for many changed dramatically as a consequence of lockdowns, remote working, unemployment, and reduced salaries. How this will change people’s locational choices and commuting strategies in the long run is still unknown. The possibilities for flexible working and/or working from home do not apply to all occupational groups, and the prerequisites for commuting also vary depending on geographical location. All these factors influence residential preferences and migration and commuting behavior among individuals and households in rural and urban environments and call for further research.

Against this background, this Special Issue aims to bridge research on different kinds of population mobility by linking counter-urban migration to commuting and its role for reaching a social sustainability in everyday life.

The scope of this Special Issue is to provide a platform for researchers to share their research work within the field of population mobility and social sustainability in daily life, including aspects of migration, commuting, and rural and/or urban development.

Among others, the following topics are encouraged:

  • Post-pandemic migration and commuting patterns;
  • Counter-urbanization population movement impacts on commuting patterns;
  • Social sustainability for different groups of counter urban movers;
  • Social sustainability in families’ everyday life as a result of counter-urban migration;
  • Relations between migration motives and possibilities for working from home;
  • Interconnections between different life domains in counter-urban migration decisions;
  • Commuting and its impacts on social sustainability in rural and urban areas.

Dr. Erika Sandow
Dr. Emma Lundholm
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • migration
  • commuting
  • long-distance commuting
  • social sustainability
  • daily mobility
  • counter urban migration
  • rural migration
  • urban–rural migration
  • internal migration
  • counter-urbanization
  • everyday life

Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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