Abstract
The spread of teleworking due to the COVID-19 pandemic has led to lifestyle changes for the large city residents, who live and work within their neighborhoods. Understanding how these changes in lifestyle affect residential preferences is important for future urban planning. This study aims to clarify the relationship between population density and relocation intentions using a questionnaire survey conducted in 2020 and 2021 among teleworkers living in Tokyo. The results confirm that population density has a nonlinear effect on residential preferences. Specifically, low-density and appropriately high-density areas are preferred, whereas intermediate-density and overcrowded areas are avoided. Applying this result to an urban structure in which density gradually decreases from the urban center to the outer suburbs, it means that areas with low, high, low, and high residential preferences appear in that order. In other words, a double-circle structure of residential preferences in large cities may exist as a post COVID-19.
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Data availability
The data supporting the findings of this study are available to researchers who have been approved by the ethical review for this study. The data can be obtained from the authors upon reasonable request.
Code availability
The R code for our statistical analyses is available at https://github.com/sankakuyamataka-alt/doublecircle.git.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge Dr. Makoto Yokohari for the valuable input and insightful discussions, which were instrumental in shaping the research concept, and express deep gratitude to Dr. Yutaka Shinada, whose pioneering work provided the fundamental inspiration for this study. This research was funded by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and JSPS KAKENHI grant numbers 21K14311, 25K02041 and 25K17745.
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T.Y. and A.I. conceptualized the study, developed the research ideas, and designed the survey questionnaire. T.Y. and Y.O. conducted the statistical analysis. T.Y. was responsible for writing the manuscript and creating the figures and tables. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.
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Yamazaki, T., Iida, A. & Ohkubo, Y. Double circle of density preferences among teleworkers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Tokyo. npj Urban Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-026-00357-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42949-026-00357-6
