Understanding the urban metabolism: residential mobility, demographics and housing...in London

Boyana Buyuklieva, Adam Dennett and Hannah Fry, UCL

(Project no. 1012184)

It is commonly assumed that London is an increasingly transient city, however this statement has remained ill-defined and unquantified. House-price and rent affordability are push factors that hinder Londoners from putting down roots and thereby contributing to the city after a certain stage in their life-cycle. The scale and long-term effects of such widespread residential adjustment moves are critical for understanding the human capital and community building dynamics of the capital and its smaller sub-areas. The purpose of this research is to identify the characteristics of migrants and understand area factors of residential mobility with a specific focus on London.

Individuals rarely occupy the same residence during childhood, education, employment and family formation. This is especially true for London, which has been shown to constitute an ‘escalator region’ (Fielding, 1992) - a region where individuals move to for professional accomplishment, but eventually move out of especially near their child-bearing years.

The aim of this research is to understand London’s population dynamics and how this has evolved over time, with a focus on household and housing conditions.

The purpose is to pick out variable combinations that are linked to high mobility in specific groups. The variables chosen are broadly in sorted into four themes: individual demographic (e.g age, gender, education), household and housing variables, and economic proxies.

The motivation of the work is that London’s population has been increasing in recent decades, and having an understanding of the relationship between demographic, household and housing variables, and migration is important for understanding the social, cultural and economic implications of residential expansion in the city. This sits in the larger program of understanding, what types of new developments add value to competitive cities like London, in terms of land-use and demographic mix. Otherwise stated, the value of this research is in addressing: To what extent can a statement be made about the likelihood of individuals putting down roots in a city based on their demographic profile and the characteristics of the area they live in; and are we able to say something about community and socio-cultural sustainability over time through a detailed analysis of how residential mobility interacts with other household and housing variables? Crucial to this assessment is an understanding of the longitudinal residential trajectories of individuals.

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