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Sustainability
Special Issues
Counter Urban Migration, Commuting, and Social Sustainability in Everyday Life
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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: closed (26 March 2023) | Viewed by 8685

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 submissions that pass pre-check are 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 2400 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 (3 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 2776 KiB  
Article
Counter-Urban Activity Out of Copenhagen: Who, Where and Why?
by Hans Thor Andersen, Aske Egsgaard-Pedersen, Høgni Kalsø Hansen, Elise Stenholt Lange and Helle Nørgaard
Sustainability 2022, 14(11), 6516; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14116516 - 26 May 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1787
Abstract
While migration is often understood as movement towards cities, it can also assume another direction, traditionally termed counter-urbanisation. This paper contributes to the study of counter-urbanisation by investigating data on settlement patterns to places outside commuting distance to the Copenhagen labour market. Counter-urban [...] Read more.
While migration is often understood as movement towards cities, it can also assume another direction, traditionally termed counter-urbanisation. This paper contributes to the study of counter-urbanisation by investigating data on settlement patterns to places outside commuting distance to the Copenhagen labour market. Counter-urban migration outside of the Copenhagen commuting area is compared with out-migration from Copenhagen to suburbs and commuting areas in the period from 2005 to 2020, reflecting periods of both economic growth and recession. In this paper, we explore this development in terms of the numbers and characteristics of migrants moving out of commuting distance in comparison to those migrants who leave the city to settle in the suburbs or within commuting distance. The quantitative findings are combined with qualitative findings from a survey of the motives of migrants. In line with earlier studies, this study finds that family, friends, place-specific relations and job opportunities are important motives for moving. However, the results also show that an increasing share of migrants have higher education. This will contribute to the future economic and social sustainability of rural and peripheral places in Denmark. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Counter Urban Migration, Commuting, and Social Sustainability in Everyday Life)
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19 pages, 824 KiB  
Article
A Sustainable Everyday Life for Counterurbanising Swedish Families
by Fredrik Hoppstadius and Ulrika Åkerlund
Sustainability 2022, 14(9), 5523; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14095523 - 5 May 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1743
Abstract
Even though urbanisation is the prevailing trend in modern societies, the net migration balance of Sweden’s largest cities has been negative for the past few years, and overrepresented among these migrants are families with young children. The stories of counterurbanisation have often relied [...] Read more.
Even though urbanisation is the prevailing trend in modern societies, the net migration balance of Sweden’s largest cities has been negative for the past few years, and overrepresented among these migrants are families with young children. The stories of counterurbanisation have often relied on rather stereotypical representations of unsustainable city life versus sustainable rural life, thus strengthening the much criticised rural–urban binary. The aim of this article is to explore how the counterurbanising families’ ideas of “a sustainable everyday life” developed during and after the migration event. We uncover the needs, ideological foundations, practices, capacities, social atmosphere, temporality, and place-based understanding of one’s own role and responsibilities in society by studying what the families do in their everyday lives, what they are striving to achieve, and how they understand sustainability. Counterurbanising families represent a driven group that are not primarily guided by economic wants—as many of their active choices are lifestyle-driven. Our theoretical foundation highlights the structures and dimensions of social sustainability, relational place, and learning, contrasted with the subjectivity of everyday life in the urban–rural transition. Forty-five in-depth interviews (1–2 h) were conducted via video conference software, and the material was analysed using thematic analysis. The findings indicate that the views and understandings of social sustainability among counterurbanising young families highlight place-based needs and conditions, with implications for sustainability and mobility research, individuals, and contemporary society as a whole in navigating the somewhat diminishing rural–urban dichotomy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Counter Urban Migration, Commuting, and Social Sustainability in Everyday Life)
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18 pages, 282 KiB  
Article
Impacts of Commuting Practices on Social Sustainability and Sustainable Mobility
by Melina Stein, Luca Nitschke, Laura Trost, Ansgar Dirschauer and Jutta Deffner
Sustainability 2022, 14(8), 4469; https://doi.org/10.3390/su14084469 - 8 Apr 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3834
Abstract
Commuting is an integral part of many people’s everyday life providing a transition between private and working life. It does, however, lead to negative impacts at a personal and social-ecological level (health impacts, lack of time, climate emissions, etc.). This article is based [...] Read more.
Commuting is an integral part of many people’s everyday life providing a transition between private and working life. It does, however, lead to negative impacts at a personal and social-ecological level (health impacts, lack of time, climate emissions, etc.). This article is based on the transdisciplinary research project “CommuterLab” (PendelLabor), which investigates commuting practices in the German Rhine-Main region. Using a practice-theoretical approach, we conducted a qualitative empirical study to explore how commuters organise the transition between their personal life and job. Through our analysis, we were able to identify different meanings of commuting and its strong interconnection with other everyday practices. This allowed us to gain deep insight into the social (non-)sustainability of commuting. At the core of our results are four different types of commuting practice whose impact on social sustainability differs widely. Furthermore, since the interviews were conducted during the coronavirus pandemic, respondents had their first experience of strongly reduced commuting. This in turn allowed insights into the changing organisation of everyday life and the impact of reconfigured commuting practices on social sustainability. Based on these results, we drew conclusions about the dynamics of commuting in terms of social sustainability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Counter Urban Migration, Commuting, and Social Sustainability in Everyday Life)
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