Residential mobility, housing market dynamics and metropolitan inequalities in Rome and Milan in the 2000s: Changes in suburbanisation among Italians and foreigners

Abstract

This paper examines the dynamics of suburbanisation in Rome and Milan, Italy's two largest metropolitan areas, during the 2000s. It aims to shed light on changes in residential mobility patterns and their implications for spatial urban inequalities, focusing on the role of socioeconomic inequalities and the differing effects on Italians and foreigners. As two of the largest urban regions in the European Union, Rome and Milan represent distinct contexts with contrasting economic trajectories: Milan experienced growth during the period, while Rome faced stagnation. These cases highlight how macroeconomic shocks, particularly the 2008 Great Recession, differentially affected real estate and residential dynamics, highlighting spatial and socioeconomic inequalities in these cities. We use cross-sectional individual data from population registers on intra-urban residential mobility between 2003 and 2019, a rarely available dataset in Southern European countries. The methodological approach includes descriptive analyses using migration rates as well as multivariate analyses with logistic regression models to examine residential relocations from urban cores to surrounding rings, contextualised by trends in property values across three time periods: before, during and after the 2008 Great Recession. Our findings reveal a significant decline in suburbanisation among both Italians and foreigners in both metropolitan cities during the 2008 crisis, primarily due to reduced outflows from urban cores. In the post-crisis period, suburbanisation trends diverged, stabilising at low levels in Rome and increasing again in Milan. The study further identifies a higher propensity for suburbanisation in core neighbourhoods with low socioeconomic status, highlighting the role of socioeconomic disparities in shaping these patterns. Additionally, we explore heterogeneous residential mobility patterns among different foreign subgroups, illustrating how immigrant populations are differently impacted by urban and suburban dynamics, contributing to metropolitan inequalities.