The Residential Careers of People from the Nonmetropolitan Area within the Tokyo Metropolitan Area

In the high economic growth era, a tide of people from the nonmetropolitan area flowed into the metropolitan areas where they put down roots for starting and nurturing their families. To obtain the fundamental knowledge to understand the processes that led to the expansion of metropolitan suburbs, we examined the residential careers of people from the nonmetropolitan area. Longitudinal data on residential careers were collected through a survey of graduates of high schools in Nagano Prefecture who lived in the Tokyo metropolitan area using a retrospective questionnaire. In the data, the end of each residential career is not converged into a specific area, as different from the data used in the preceding studies. Thus, it enables us to investigate the spatial characteristics of residential moves within the metropolitan area generally. In addition, the residential careers of three cohorts (around 60, 50 and 40 years old at present) were studied comparatively in terms of the socioeconomic context to apply the concept of life-course.<br> From the viewpoint of family life cycle, the residential careers of the three cohorts have similar characteristics. The number of residential moves after marriage is normally one or two, and the mobility of the family peaks when the age of the householder is around 30. Most of the householders become owner-occupiers in the first half of their 30s, when the mobility of the family decreases drastically. While the inclination toward the home ownership can be observed in each of the three cohorts, the time for purchasing a house and affordable types of housing are influenced by the conditions of the housing market and the lifestyle of the generation of the time. That is, families in all generations want to be owner-occupiers, but types house purchased and ability to buy a owneroccupied house were influenced by the socio-economic context of the time.<br> Summing up the spatial characteristics of residential moves within the metropolitan area, shortdistance and centrifugal moves are prominent and most moves are made within the sector zones of the metropolitan circle. Because the desire of a family for larger living space is materialized by residential relocations in the concentric structure of the urban land price, centrifugal moves mainly have an origin around the core of the metropolitan area and cause the suburbanization of residential place. After purchasing their own home, some families change houses within a narrow district nearby. These residential careers in the aggregate result in the suburbanization of residence and set the foundation for subsequent independence of metropolitan suburbs.