Abstract
Metropolitan areas are the focus of political attention to maintain economic activity. For some workers, accessibility to the workplace is not always a key factor in their residential strategies. Since COVID-19, medium-sized cities have been promoting their residential attractiveness. The aim of this article is to better understand how this spatial tension between residential attractiveness and economic attractiveness is reflected in migration flows from French metropolitan areas. Using statistical models, these choices are analyzed according to distance from the metropolitan area of origin and commuting mode. This distinction based on distance from the origin city highlights, on the one hand, the different practices and links to the workplace and, on the other hand, professional categories that do not experience the same types of migration. Firstly, our results highlight that this migration away from the metropolitan area is not so massive and also concerns more modest households. Secondly, relocate close to their metropolitan area of previous residence is more likely to involve “low-skills" workers, and is corelated with higher car use. Relocate more than 50 km from previous place of residence tends to involve the “high-skilled” workers with more alternative modes to the car. Depending on the distance from their previous place of residence, between 30% and 60% of workers keep their workplace and question the consistency of land use policies and their impact on well-being, sustainability, and inequality.