IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v17y2025i21p9555-d1780729.html

The Pandemic and the City: Empirical Evidence of Lifestyle and Location Preference Changes in Japan

Author

Listed:
  • Tsutomu Watanabe

    (Graduate School of Economics, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8654, Japan)

  • Dongyuan Mu

    (Center for Urban & Real Estate Studies, Hitotsubashi University, 2-1 Naka, Kunitachi-shi, Tokyo 186-8601, Japan)

Abstract

This study examines how individuals’ preferences for four types of urban functions—residential, work-related, transportation, and leisure—shifted in Japan following the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the widespread adoption of remote work, mainly in large cities, strengthened preferences for residential amenities while reducing the importance of work-related and transportation functions. In contrast, smaller cities with limited infrastructure experienced more modest changes. Our analysis further reveals that, in metropolitan areas, preference shifts are less strongly associated with local and surrounding amenity conditions, suggesting more complex internal dynamics. By comparison, in smaller cities, the scarcity of amenities makes them play a greater role in shaping these changes.

Suggested Citation

  • Tsutomu Watanabe & Dongyuan Mu, 2025. "The Pandemic and the City: Empirical Evidence of Lifestyle and Location Preference Changes in Japan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 17(21), pages 1-24, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:21:p:9555-:d:1780729
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/21/9555/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/21/9555/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:21:p:9555-:d:1780729. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask MDPI Indexing Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.