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Research Article

How do suburban residents organize their daily lives? A behavioural time–space analysis in Beijing, China

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Pages 396-411 | Received 21 Mar 2022, Accepted 25 Jun 2022, Published online: 27 Jul 2022
 

ABSTRACT

Rapid suburbanization in China is dramatically reshaping the daily life of urban residents. In China, long-distance commuting, traffic congestion, spatial mismatch and the low quality of life resulting from residential suburbanization are causing widespread concern. This paper compares the changes in time allocation from a time-use perspective, based on two activity-travel survey datasets collected in suburban Beijing in respectively 2007 and 2017. Travelling time to work has increased substantially between 2007 and 2017 and particularly impacted non-working activities. Working and commuting showed to have the greatest impact on time allocated to non-work activities, both in home and out of home, both maintenance and discretionary activities. Furthermore, residents’ allocation of time to non-work activities shows to be influenced too by their socioeconomic attributes, such as gender, marital status and household configuration (e.g. extended family). We found that the space–time constraints imposed by household responsibilities leads to greater gender differences in time allocation. This paper provides insight into how urban residents reallocate their time as a result of increasing suburbanization.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [41771185]; Chinese Government Scholarship [41529101].