Space-Time Analysis of Migrations, Employment, and Housing as A Basis for Municipal Sustainable Urban Planning

Abstract

A close relationship exists between population, the housing market and the level of employment at the local level. On the one hand, the housing market is influenced by local planning decisions and, on the other hand, that market is a significant factor in population and economic dynamization. Although there are studies on these variables, it is not common to include their spatial perspective by introducing Geographic Information System (GIS) tools in the analysis. The aim of this study is to analyse space-time associations among the variables migrations, housing prices, and employment prior to and during the economic crisis, in order to adapt sustainable land use policies to be used by land use planning authorities. Bivariate Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (bivariate ESDA) has been used for this purpose. As our main results demonstrate, spatial positive autocorrelation was found between the variables employment in a village before the crisis and housing prices in neighbouring municipalities during it, indicating that people move to live in areas close to their workplace, but not necessarily to the same municipality. The analysis also shows spatial homogeneity of the variable housing prices, accompanied by temporal stability. The results indicate the need to implement sustainable control land use policies, not at the municipality level but at the county level.