Movement matters: uncovering life-course similarities and differences in residential environment perspectives

Neighbourhoods play a crucial role in residents’ everyday lives. People become attached to neighbourhood attributes throughout their lives and various activities performed within residential environments. Everyday time-space mobility routines actively impact how residents connect with their neighbourhoods. This paper aims to analyse residents’ links with their residential surroundings arising from their everyday spatial behaviours. It examines the topic in two dynamically transforming neighbourhood types in the Prague Metropolitan Area and from the perspectives of two population groups: older children from the suburbs and older adults from the gentrifying inner city. The study adopted qualitative data analysis using semi-structured interviews. Both groups fulfil neighbourhood attachments through various obligatory and optional movement types as well as accompanying social ties that constitute an important part of such moves. The neighbourhood links achieved through movement are shaped by complex mechanisms that occur at various spatial and temporal scales adding to the variety of functional and affective meanings of everyday mobility practices. They emerge along life-course shifts of individuals, changes in the neighbourhoods and activities happening within these spatial contexts. Residents then use numerous adaptive strategies to adjust their movements (and in turn their links with the neighbourhoods) to the combined effects of those conditions.