Spatial Lifestyle Clusters and Access to the City: Evidence from the Stockholm Region

Abstract

This paper analyses the distribution of social infrastructure (accessibility to services and job opportunities) in a perspective of spatial lifestyle stratification in the Stockholm region. The study is based on a questionnaire completed by 1160 respondents, capturing individual data on attitudes, lifestyles and demography, and urban morphological qualities developed from high resolution register data. The spatial social stratification is based on a spatial cluster analysis on six lifestyles: highly success-oriented; success-oriented with high work ethics; conscious young and elder; people with weak motivations; designers; and middle-class bourgeois. They are spatially distributed in eight overlapping spatial clusters, namely: highly success-oriented and socially mixed central inner city; designers’ inner suburbia; socially mixed inner suburbia; middle-class bourgeois suburbia; highly success-oriented suburbia; conscious young-elder suburbia; socially mixed exurbia; and socially mixed rurality. It turns out that people characterized by weak motivation lifestyle (low income, low education level, not success oriented, etc.) are the most negatively affected lifestyle cluster concerning accessibility to jobs and service. A total of 45% of the ‘weak motivation lifestyle’ respondents reside in ‘socially mixed exurbia’ and ‘socially mixed rurality’. They experience less than 20% of social infrastructure compared to, in this respect, the most privileged spatial lifestyle cluster, the ‘highly success-oriented and socially mixed central inner city’ cluster. Still, surprisingly, this ‘weak motivation’ lifestyle is also concentrated in the ‘socially mixed inner suburbia’ cluster. One reason for this dual spatial concentration might be the Swedish rental policy, linked to residential use-values and a queuing system, instead of exchange values. This policy allows for a complex spatial social stratification influenced by a range of factors (lifestyle and attitudes among others), and not merely income.