Short distance, big impact: The effects of intra-city workplace relocation on staff mobility practices

Abstract

In an increasingly globalised economic system, company relocations are common and occur at different scales, ranging from international moves to relocations within a relatively small geographical area such as a city. Regarding changes in commuting following relocation, transport studies have already provided valuable insights into changing trip characteristics such as mode choice and duration of the journey. However, wider impacts of relocations on mobility practices such as shifts in trip chaining, changes in employees' social practices and networks, their satisfaction with the new commute as well as adaptation strategies (e.g. residential relocation and increased car ownership) remain under-researched, especially whenever these changes are mainly local in scale and impact everyday life. Building on and extending previous research on relocations, we explicitly adopt a mobility biographies perspective that reconceptualises workplace relocation as an incisive life event that reshapes employee's mobility practices in complex ways. We use quasi-longitudinal survey data based on retrospection to reveal major mobility-related consequences of a company's decision to move their production facilities within the German city of Munich.This paper aptly demonstrates how even a short-distance, intra-city company relocation can disrupt employees' daily routines and reshape their own and other people's mobility. It provides novel insights into changes in satisfaction with the commute itself as well as with reduced opportunities for trip chaining. Regarding adaptation to workplace relocation, moving house or buying a (second) car emerged as important responses. Furthermore, it was possible to demonstrate the wider effects of relocation on employees' social environment such as weakened social ties among workers due to reduced opportunities for after-work activities and negative post-relocation impacts on neighbourhoods and small businesses in the old company location. Many respondents viewed these changes as undesirable reductions in quality of life. The concluding part of the paper outlines some opportunities for future social research in this area.