Really permanently urban? An empirical Study of Young Adults’ Short-and Long-term Wishes for Residential Environment as a Contribution to the Debate on Reurbanization

Abstract

The residential migrations and housing preferences of young adults play a significant role in the context of the reurbanization debate. They are regularly identified as a main contributor group to reurbanization. In this context, students are of particular importance for many cities. However, the findings mainly refer to Generation Y (born circa 1980-2000). Regarding the subsequent Generation Z (“post-millennials”), less is known. One way to understand the dynamics and direction of possible changing housing environment desires is to ask young adults about how they would like to live after completing their education or later. This paper analyses the housing aspirations of a sample of spatial planning students in Dortmund. To under-stand the factors influencing housing desires a multinomial logit model is estimated. The main results show, firstly, that only very few students want to live urban in the long term, while almost half have rather suburban and small town preferences. A substantial share (28 percent) is even anti-urban. Second, these preferences are determined by the respondents housing experiences in childhood and adolescence, by inter-generational effects (parents housing preferences and mobility attitudes), by individual mobility attitudes, and by realized everyday mobility. With regard to future spatial development, it can be concluded that reurbanization can by no means be regarded as a self-propelling process.