La mobilité domicile-travail des nouveaux résidents des villes moyennes françaises

The recent highlighting of medium-sized cities reverses their image as shrinking cities. However, in these cities, few alternatives to the use of cars appear to be efficient today. In this context of a territory where real estate market is not particularly tight, is the moment of relocation an opportunity for households to move closer to their workplace? In this article, we aim to better understand the residential migration of workers in medium-sized cities. This relocation will be studied in relation to their workplace and their previous place of residence. In this article, we use individual data on workers residing in 116 French medium-sized cities. The 2016 census enables the joint analysis of the change in place of residence and commuting. For each worker, the main mode of travel as well as a calculation of the distance between the place of residence and the workplace enables a comparison of commuting between previous residents and those who have moved in the last two years. Distinguishing between urban contexts allows us to refine these comparisons of residential strategies. The relocation does not reduce the already dominant use of cars, whatever the situation. The residential strategy of staying in the same territory accounts for a large proportion of moves and is coupled with a decrease in the distance between residence and workplace. However, nearly 30 % of new entrants to a medium-sized city continue to work outside the city, with a workplace over 50 km from their residence. The contrast between the employment attractiveness policies of metropolises and the residential attractiveness of medium-sized cities questions the sustainability of the overlapping lifestyles that are thus created.