Interregional commuting and residential multi-locality in Finland

Significant or marginal flows?

Abstract

Work-related residential multi-locality is becoming more common, while forms of work and working conditions are diversifying, the share of teleworking is increasing and the time and place dependency of work is weakening. In simple form, multi-locality refers to residence or staying in more than one place. This study focuses on work-based multi-locality which has been considered affecting the availability of workforce, commuting patterns, traffic emissions and time spent travelling. However, work-related residential multi-locality is not recognised by official statistics. The study aims to deepen the understanding of the spatial structures of commuting at different distances, especially at the inter-regional scale, in Finland. Again, the aim is to analyse the spatial patterns and volume of work-related residential multi-locality. The analyses are based on the geographic information systems/science (GIS) and the grid-based (250 × 250m) commuting data of Finnish monitoring system of spatial structure and urban form (YKR). The study identifies structures related to regional and local commuting, inter-regional commuting and potentially work-related residential multi-locality i.e. distance to work exceeds typically acceptable commuting distances. The study applies network metrics to evaluate network-centricity of municipalities in relation to commuting flows.