Locational Behaviour of Households in a Constrained Housing Market

Locational behaviour in urban agglomerations has to be analyzed in the context of constrained housing markets, where households with low or medium incomes have to deal with serious and varied constraints when they consider a move. Given the background of the housing market in West German conurbations, conceptual and methodological deficiencies of traditional migration research are pointed out. Except for a few studies, it has been restricted to moves and to completed moves. Immobility as a dominant strategy of locational behaviour has not even been considered. By means of standardized shortview surveys, the complexity of the decisionmaking process as a whole has been largely ignored. Individual preferences have been emphasized whereas objective housing market conditions and impacts of planning and housing policy have been neglected. In a comprehensive study on locational behaviour in the Stuttgart conurbation a new approach has been applied, with a panel of households investigated over a period of four years by use of in-depth interviews and qualitative methods of analysis. The context of housing and planning policy and of the residential environment is described; and the first results of the project, which is still going on, are reported. They illustrate the extent of immobile strategies of locational behaviour and the dominance of locational decision situations with a small number of choices and numerous constraints. A concluding evaluation of some of the instruments of the quite elaborate German housing policy indicates that the housing needs of the majority of households demanding or living in rented flats are still largely neglected.