Recently, we are working on a research project
The Urban Escape
The migration from metropolitan areas to the countryside is often explained as a nostalgic searching for the “rural idyll“; although many researches engaged in this topic show that this simple statement doesn‘t explain the complexity of the decision making process that leads to the choice of a final place to live. Apparently, the key to understanding the structure of this decentralized behavior lies in taking into consideration a variety of viewpoints on how people perceive the pros and cons of particular places.
We focus on the reasons and priorities of both families, and individuals, who moved from Prague to a suburban area after the year 2012. To answer the question why the citizens of Prague prefer certain areas to others, I will employ Lazarsfeld’s Reason Analysis. This method will allow me to generate typical models of accounting schemes and thereby shed more light on how people’s decision making processes are formed. The new insights into this phenomenon will add to, and update, current knowledge from the perspective of both sociology and socio-geography.
Seeking Real Estate Professionals for Urban Escape Research!
Are you a real estate professional specializing in helping clients transition from urban living to rural areas? We’re conducting research on the factors driving this trend and the experiences of those involved.
We can share our research findings with you in exchange for your valuable insights and experience in the real estate market.
Šárka Tesařová, sarka@saturnin.eu
Phases of Research
I. Phase
Counterurbanisation Stories
In the first phase, which we called “Counterurbanisation Stories”, we conduct unstructured interviews with the actors of this change themselves, focusing mainly on the reasons for their decisions and the process of choosing the location, or the final object. We investigate social ties, economic contexts, the influence of lifestyle and family values, and finally the way residential preferences are formed through secondary sources and personal experience. This gives us a complete interesting story, which we analyze using the methods of narrative analysis, we look for common elements in the stories, which we will then use for the next phases of the research. Over time, we will also consider sharing individual stories after adjustments ensuring the anonymity of the respondent.
A summary of our interviews so far is available in the overview, where the basic characteristics of the place, the method of finding a place and the factors that were decisive in this case are given for each interviewee. It follows from these few interviews that the topic of moving to the countryside is quite complex and contains a whole range of topics that at first glance do not seem to be related to this topic. In a number of cases, we come across residential preferences that are closely related to the childhood of the interviewed persons or, in some cases, it may only be a matter of some life period that left an indelible mark in their memories, and some people admit that it took them a very long time to discover this motive in their subconscious . In many cases, however, the motives are pragmatic, focused on the benefits of the given place, whether it is sports activities for young people or the presence of civic amenities in the place for people of advanced age. However, in almost all cases, social contacts in a given place play a significant role. As we found out, it is one of the key factors that contributes to a person’s satisfaction in a given locality, whether they thought about this topic when choosing a place or not. Based on this finding, we are considering a third research phase, which would be based on participant observation.”
Real Estate Expert Perspective
In addition to the expressions of the actors themselves through unstructured interviews, we also get the opinions and experiences of experts from the real estate market, which, given their experience with many cases, are key in their ability to gain insight into the phenomenon. A view from a higher perspective will allow us to identify decision-making patterns that significantly influence the migratory behavior of individuals and families. Based on the data obtained in this way, we create a decision scheme for a standardized questionnaire, which we will distribute in the second quantitative phase of the project, using our chosen methodological approach “reason analysis”. The perspective of a professional will primarily ensure the coverage of alternatives that we could miss with a small sample of interviewees. and we would not include them in the possibilities of a standardized questionnaire in the next, quantitative phase of the research.