WHEN COMMUTING IS NOT ENOUGH: TOWARDS A MEASURE OF TERRITORIAL MARGINALITY BASED ON JOB MOBILITY

ABSTRACT

Access to the workplace is one of the most important rights of citizenship. In some areas, the unavailability of job opportunities pushes people to commute. Nevertheless, there are areas where even commuting does not allow the improvement of individuals’ economic and social conditions. This locks residents into a local job market that can be, in many cases, limited, low-income, or just unsatisfying. In this paper, we focus on the latest conditions in the Lombardia region (Italy). In order to identify marginal areas where low transport accessibility and high commuting cost may represent a barrier to territorial disparities in job access, we compare different classifications of marginality: socioeconomic indicators, an institutional one (SNAI), and, finally, one based on an indicator of marginal commuting gain (MCG). Evidence from this work will show an almost perfect match between very-fragile territories in socioeconomic terms and areas characterized by a low MCG indicator.

Keywords::

• commuting
• fragile territories
• Italy
• job accessibility
• marginal territories
• mobility

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Evgeniia Shtele, research fellow at Politecnico of Milan (TRASPOL) and Alberto Bertolin for assistance in data processing. They also would like to thanks Vilém Pařil for the inspiration. This work was supported by the multidisciplinary research project “Fragilità territoriali” developed by the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of Politecnico di Milano.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00167428.2022.2036075

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research [Departments of Excellence (L. 232/2016)].