Suburbanization in countries in transition: destinations of suburbanizers in the tallinn metropolitan area

Abstract

.Suburbanization is one of the key phenomena of spatial population change in many countries in transition. Yet we know surprisingly little about the population carrying out the post‐socialist suburbanization process. The objective of this article is to improve on this situation by studying the Tallinn metropolis in Estonia. Our analysis, which covers the inter‐censal period 1989 to 2000, focuses on the differences between population subgroups with respect to their probabilities to move to the suburbs. As such, it also clarifies choices of destination by dwelling and municipality type. For the analysis, we use individual anonymous 2000 census data and logistic regression. The results indicate that suburbanization was a socially polarizing process during this period. People with low social status had the highest probability to sub‐urbanize, and mainly occupied the pre‐existing housing stock. Conversely, people with high social status were less likely to move into suburban areas, yet when they did they moved to the most attractive destinations in the suburbs (new single‐family houses, coastal municipalities and municipalities closer to the city).