Residential Location Choice in Istanbul, Tehran, and Cairo: The Importance of Commuting to Work

Abstract

The determinants of residential location choice have not been investigated in many developing countries. This paper examines this topic, including the influence of urban travels on house location decision-making in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Based on 8284 face-to-face interviews in Istanbul, Tehran, and Cairo, the dummy variable of residential location choice, including two categories of mobility reasons and other factors, was modeled by binary probit regression modeling. By means of receiver-operating characteristic analysis, the cutoff value of commuting distance and the time passed from the last relocation was estimated. Finally, the significant difference between the value of these two variables for people with different house location reasons were tested by Mann–Whitney U-test. The results show that the eight variables of shopping-entertainment mode choice in faraway places, frequency of public transit trips, neighborhood attractiveness perception, age, number of driving licenses in household, commuting distance, number of accessed facilities, and the (walkable) accessibility of facilities influence the residential self-selections. People who chose their current home based on mobility commute a daily mean distance of 8596 m and relocated less than 15.5 years ago, while those who chose their home based on other reasons, such as socioeconomics or personal reasons, commute longer and moved to a new house more than 15.5 years ago. This shows how the attitudes of people about residential location have changed in the MENA region, but there are still contextual differences to high-income countries.