SPATIAL CHARACTERS OF JOBS LOCATION AND IMPACTS ON INCOME OF RESIDENTS IN URBAN AFFORDABLE HOUSING OF KUNMING
HOU Xue-ying1, WU Gong-sheng1, WANG Sheng-yun2, CHEN Le3
1. School of Urban and Environment, Yunnan University of Finance and Economics, Kunming 650221, China;
2. School of Economics & Management, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330047, China;
3. School of Geography and Planning, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
Abstract The construction of affordable housing is very helpful to solve the housing difficulties of a large number of low-income families in cities.According to the spatial mismatch hypothesis, neighbourhoods were far away from the employment center, it could cause spatial mismatch between residence and workplace, and would result in high unemployment, low-income and other problems. A few researches about spatial (mis) match in Chinese urban poor neighbourhoods had been done in recent years:the case studies of Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Nanjing showed that most of residents living in the affordable housing neighbourhoods were employed at a distance, and the long commuting distance increased their living burdens. Compared with Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, Kunming is a smaller, less-developed inland city and be used as study sample in this paper. This study aims to answer two major research questions:first, could spatial match or mismatch be found in Kunming affordable housing communities; second, what impacts of spatial (mis)match on residents' income? This study selected low rent housing, public rental housing and economical housing communities, 3 kinds of affordable housing, totally 7 affordable housing communities as study samples. Using the indexes of commuting distance, commuting duration, commuting mode, location of the workplace, this study analyzed the jobs-housing relationship in affordable housing neighborhoods, revealed that spatial match or mismatch could be found in Kunming. Then, through the establishment of multiple regression equation, this study revealed the impacts of spatial match or mismatch on resident's income level. The results of this paper supported the spatial mismatch hypothesis. The residents living in affordable housing communities has very limited capabilities to make trade-off between jobs and housing location. They could neither burden a high housing cost, nor could they increase their income level through choosing employment at a distance.
2016, Vol. 31 
