Creative Class

New research by the Gallup Organization finds that 700 million people – 16 percent of the world’s total population – would like to move to a different country than the one they currently call home.

The first map below shows the percentages of people in various regions of the world that desire to permanently move to another country.

The second map shows the places these movers would most like to relocate to.

Gallup also compiled a very interesting index of potential net migration which compares “the estimated number of adults who would like to move out of a country permanently subtracted from the estimated number who would like to move to it,” as a proportion of the total population. Here are the top five and bottom five countries. Interestingly, the United States did not make the top five.

Americans keep on moving. Roughly 40 million U.S. residents moved in 2006-2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (h/t: Kevin Stolarick). Of these, more than 12 million moved to a new county or a new state. Young people in their twenties were the most likely to move – roughly a quarter of all Americans in their twenties moved during this period. And jobs are not the most common reason people move. Finding a better house or neighborhood and family reasons are the most common reasons; employment is third. Renters are far more mobile than homeowners.

Get this: almost one-third (29 percent) of renters moved in 2006-2008, compared to less than 10 percent of those who lived in owner-occupied homes. And this was before the mortgage crisis hit. Single family homes were part of the industrial economy’s “spatial fix.” Many workers had long-term secure employment and the suburban model fueled fordist consumption. But single family homes suck up resources and energy and act against the the mobility and flexibility demanded by the creative economy. What might replace them as the new spatial fix for the creative age?