Residential characteristics of armed-forces personnel and the urban economy: Evidence from a medium sized city in Greece

Abstract

The paper explores the locational and residential decisions of Greek military households. To achieve this, primary data were collected by means of a questionnaire survey addressed to military personnel located in Volos, a medium-sized Greek city in the greater area of which a number of major military facilities are located. The study starts by examining the residential distribution of military households to consider whether clustering or dispersion is evident. Then, an attempt is made to explain the observed pattern with reference to conventional urban economics' determinants of location choice or to other factors related to the social or professional characteristics of the group. Such analysis enables us to draw some preliminary conclusions on the potential effects military facilities have on both the urban spatial structure and the housing market.