A GIS Approach to Identifying Locally the Spatial Migration Patterns and Interactions between Housing Market Areas in Greater Manchester

Researchers have long been considering the role of spatial migration linkages in the housing market as it is important to help planners and policymakers review housing supply and estimate housing demand to provide sufficient housing supply to meet household needs in future. Many have investigated the trade-off between house price and migration but little attention has been paid to exploring their spatial interactions in housing market areas at the local level. To fill the gap, this paper intended to use a GIS approach to uncover the inside values of the 2011 migration flow data and the 2011 house price data to identify the spatial migration patterns in the housing market areas for Greater Manchester in the UK. The results showed that there were specific spatial linkages in various local areas, and finding the problematic patterns may help us make the local housing market operate better by changing the existing problematic patterns, and improving housing conditions and/or transportation system. The contribution of this paper was to demonstrate the usefulness of the GIS approach in generating the useful information hidden in the big data sources to generate new knowledge regarding the spatial relationship between the components of the local housing market system.