Editorial | Open Access
Digital Transition and New Forms of Spatial Inequality
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Abstract: This thematic issue examines how digital transition reshapes spatial inequalities by reconfiguring relationships between people, places, and opportunities. We frame the contributions around three interrelated mechanisms—place attractiveness, access to opportunities, and the coordination of activities— that operate through housing and labour markets. Digital transition reshapes all three mechanisms, generating spatially uneven outcomes across the settlement system. Rather than producing a fundamental spatial shift or simply reproducing existing inequalities, it repositions people and places into more networked and multilocal arrangements. Suburban areas emerge as key beneficiaries, large cities retain their dominance in employment while facing intensifying housing pressures, and rural areas are increasingly reoriented towards residence and consumption, with amenity‐rich localities gaining while more peripheral areas face compounding disadvantage. We identify three avenues for future research: the implications of remote work for residential mobility and immobility; unequal household capacities to coordinate activities across digital and physical space; and the need for a multi‐scalar perspective to better understand the shift towards networked and multilocal spatial arrangements as everyday activities increasingly span physical and digital space.
Keywords: digital divide; digital transformation; housing market; labour market; multilocality; remote work; segregation; spatial inequality
Published:
© Tiit Tammaru, Kadi Kalm, Rūta Ubarevičienė, Veronika Mooses, Anto Aasa, Olle Järv. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.