Residential equivalence and urban economic segregation

Clémentine Cottineau-Mugadza, Javier San Millán

September 3, 2026

Research context

Residential choice & lifecourse

Source: (Tammaru et al., 2021)

Residential choice modelling

  • Qualitative approach to collect households’ rationale for moving, constraints and options to move and decision process of where to move (DeLuca & Jang–Trettien, 2020)
  • Discrete choice models of decision to move and destination choice (McFadden, 1978), combines household composition, lifecourse and housing characteristics.
  • (Bruch & Swait, 2019)’s research on neighbourhood choice process with introduction of the idea of choice set formation.

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Trade-offs and utility

  • Unobservable utility concept at household level
  • Qualitative exploration of trade-off processes for hundreds of (poor) households
  • Observed monetary value of houses (prices and rent levels)
  • Legacy of (non-universal) assumptions from utility models, ex. Alonso-Muth-Mills monocentric city.

source: (Alonso, 1964)

Questions

  • What strategies can we use to look at revealed equivalences?
  • How does spatial equivalence (geographical trade-offs) affect inequality and segregation?
  • How does Dutch microdata on residential history support this research?

Dutch microdata

Social Statistical Database (SSD) from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), which is:

  • longitudinal: some yearly variables (income, wealth, education, tenure), some event-based variables (household composition, addresses since 1995)
  • geocoded: 100x100m cells
  • register-based: entire population of the Netherlands

More information

What strategies can we use to look at revealed preferences?

  • Spatial equivalence: Where can you move while keeping your job constant?

  • Daily urban systems drawn by work-life location equivalents

source: (Peris, 2021)

What strategies can we use to look at revealed preferences?

Looking at the outcomes of relocation: do households trade neighbourhood characteristics for house characteristics?

Before/after \(m^2\) and neighbourhood income of households who changed characteristics and address.

for all households since 2011

How does spatial/housing equivalence affect inequality and segregation?

  • US Qualitative research shows that under economic and time pressure, households trade neighbourhood environments for unit quality, proximity to work, childcare and support system (DeLuca & Jang–Trettien, 2020) (Krysan & Crowder, 2017)

  • Housing policies can facilitate peoples’ lives by distorting existing housing equivalences to allow low-income households access to larger units and/or more affluent neighourhoods (Varady & Walker, 2003) (Hochstenbach, 2022).

How does spatial/housing equivalence affect inequality and segregation?

Looking at the effect of huurtoeslag policy in NL:

  • Subsidy recipients are concentrated in poorer neighbourhoods than average, reflecting mostly socioeconomic composition and housing tenure of recipients
  • No statistically detectable evidence that higher subsidy changes neighbourhood affluence

source: (San Millán et al., 2026a)

How does spatial/housing equivalence affect inequality and segregation?

Comparing before/after characteristics of housing in 2024 NL between:

  • ~6M Stable households
  • ~2M Changing households at the same address (composition)
  • ~1M Moving households

source: Work in Progress

Conclusion

Income and wealth are important determinants of residential (re)location, but the combination of household structure and lifecourse, experience and social network, the share and location of social housing as well as policy initiatives all interact in complex ways to allocate households spatially, transforming spatial, urban and housing equivalence into collective outcomes, segregation and spatial inequality.

Microdata can encapsulate as many of these revealed choices as possible to investigate trade-offs at scale and their consequences on inequality and segregation.

Acknowledgements & References

“Results based on calculations by TU Delft Urbanism in project number 9428 using non-public microdata from Statistics Netherlands.Under certain conditions, these microdata are accessible for statistical and scientific research. For further information: Microdata: Conducting your own research | CBS.”

Alonso, W. (1964). Location and land use: Toward a general theory of land rent. Harvard university press.
Bruch, E., & Swait, J. (2019). Choice set formation in residential mobility and its implications for segregation dynamics. Demography, 56(5), 1665–1692.
Buitrago-Mora, D., & Cottineau-Mugadza, C. (2026). Social housing and local economic segregation: Evidence from local tenure change in the netherlands. Working Paper of the UAB, 1665–1692.
Cottineau-Mugadza, C. (2025). Economic inequality and economic segregation: A systematic review of causal pathways. Social Forces. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soaf195
DeLuca, S., & Jang–Trettien, C. (2020). “Not just a lateral move”: Residential decisions and the reproduction of urban inequality. City & Community, 19(3), 451–488.
Hochstenbach, C. (2022). Uitgewoond. Das Mag.
Krysan, M., & Crowder, K. (2017). Cycle of segregation: Social processes and residential stratification. Russell Sage Foundation.
McFadden, D. (1978). Modeling the choice of residential location. In Transportation Research Record (Vol. 673, pp. 72–77).
Peris, A. (2021). Cities in interaction: Analysing the dutch system of cities with computational methods. A+ BE| Architecture and the Built Environment, 07, 1–206.
San Millán, J., Cottineau-Mugadza, C., & Van Ham, M. (2026a). Do rent subsidies expand neighbourhood opportunities? Evidence from the netherlands. Working paper.
San Millán, J., Cottineau-Mugadza, C., & Van Ham, M. (2026b). Why inequality does not always lead to segregation: The role of social housing in the netherlands. Housing Studies, 1–28.
Tammaru, T., Knapp, D., Silm, S., Van Ham, M., & Witlox, F. (2021). Spatial underpinnings of social inequalities: A vicious circles of segregation approach. Social Inclusion, 9(2), 65–76.
Varady, D. P., & Walker, C. C. (2003). Housing vouchers and residential mobility. Journal of Planning Literature, 18(1), 17–30.

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