Immigrants live all over the world, especially in large cities, and they often cluster in cheaper neighborhoods and near other immigrants. This kind of spatial separation from the local population is known as segregation.
According to Tiit Tammaru, professor of urban and population geography at the University of Tartu, immigrants tend to move close to one another largely because the desire to be among similar people is strong. “If we think about Estonians moving abroad, they also look for other Estonians to socialize with,” he noted.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that. The concern, however, is that when immigrants cluster in certain areas, their children end up attending similar schools over generations as well. This can limit their opportunities for upward mobility.
In a recent study published in Nature Cities, Tammaru and his colleagues examined where immigrant workers in the technology sector choose to live. The aim was to understand how a group that theoretically has the greatest freedom and range of options makes housing decisions: whether they choose to live among people of the same nationality or instead help reduce segregation.
The researchers focused specifically on technology sector employees who should have more freedom in choosing where to live and are not forced to settle for the cheapest areas, since tech workers earn the highest salaries in Estonia. The field also offers remote work opportunities, which in theory increases flexibility in housing choices.
“We wanted to see whether these people make nationality-based decisions that reproduce segregation in cities or whether they make choices based on occupation or social status, which would likely lead them to areas with more local residents,” Tammaru explained.
The researchers examined Estonia as a whole rather than housing choices within a single city, since remote work could in principle allow greater freedom in choosing where to live. As a final step, they compared minority groups with local technology sector workers. In other words, they examined two groups: ethnic Estonian tech workers and minority tech workers.
The study found that remote work opportunities do not make much difference: technology sector workers, like other high earners, cluster in major cities, primarily Tallinn.
“The assumption that remote work would allow people to choose homes more freely across Estonia did not hold true, especially for minorities. Ethnic Estonian tech workers do move elsewhere, but minorities clearly clustered in Tallinn. The entire digital transition and the emergence of new opportunities have in no way weakened the position of large cities. If anything, people in this sector remain very city-oriented in their choices,” the professor said.
Although people arrive in Estonia from many different countries, most technology workers come from Ukraine and Russia. The study found that they do not prefer living near compatriots, but rather tend to live in the same areas as Estonians.
“In other words, the differences in residential patterns within cities are an order of magnitude smaller for them compared with any other minority group,” Tammaru said.
Russian-speaking technology sector workers who were born in Estonia and are therefore local in a sense still remain more embedded in nationality-based networks and tend to make choices along ethnic lines.
The results therefore indicate that minority technology workers choose where to live primarily based on income and social status rather than ethnicity. This means they more often move to higher-income areas where more ethnic Estonians live.
Because minorities are not clustering along ethnic lines, there is no single clearly distinct district where they settle. However, some preferred areas can still be identified. According to Tammaru, the results are entirely logical: proximity to universities, the airport and Ülemiste City, which is primarily a technology campus.
“Overall, the housing choices of technology sector workers reduce ethnic segregation because they tend to live alongside Estonians, but at the same time they deepen income- and class-based segregation. What we now see is that wealthy Estonians and Russian-speaking residents live in the same areas, while poorer Russians live elsewhere. Ethnic segregation decreases, but income-based segregation increases. The problem lies in areas with cheaper housing,” he said.
Using Lasnamäe as an example, Tammaru explained that changes there have occurred in two waves. First, the proportion of Estonians declined and then higher-paid Russian-speaking residents also began moving away.
“There is still a risk that both one ethnic group and lower-income residents will become concentrated in Lasnamäe.”
The scientific article aimed only to describe the situation and did not analyze its possible consequences. Tammaru said, however, that if low-income Russian-speaking residents become overly concentrated in a particular district, it could become a serious concern deserving closer attention.
Because Tallinn is a small city and residents can use public transportation free of charge, movement between districts is relatively easy, which to some extent balances out the impact of where people live, Tammaru said.
“That said, it should not be completely ignored,” he added.
Many cities have begun building more new developments in neighborhoods they want to revitalize and the same has been done in Lasnamäe. Tammaru said he would like to say such solutions definitely work, but he is not optimistic enough to make that claim.
“We have different examples, particularly in Western European cities where enormous sums have been invested in the urban environment without much changing. There was also a time when nobody wanted to live in Põhja-Tallinn or Kalamaja and people preferred to move away from those areas. Now it is arguably Tallinn’s most attractive district. In other words, a neighborhood’s reputation can change over time,” he said.
The question, however, is whether a district’s reputation can actually be improved.
According to Tammaru, Põhja-Tallinn’s popularity was not the result of deliberate urban planning.
“Young people, often somewhat poorer, found that Telliskivi was actually a pretty nice area.”
The Telliskivi area had been slated for renovation, but the 2009 economic crisis put those plans on hold, leading instead to the development of the Telliskivi Creative City.
“There was no deliberate urban planning there. If anything, urban planning has struggled somewhat because from a transportation perspective the area is rather complicated,” the professor said.
According to Tammaru, Lasnamäe is in fact naturally beautiful, situated along the limestone escarpment above a valley. The architecture and urban planning department at the Estonian Academy of Arts carried out a research project titled “Unfinished City” from 2017 to 2020, focusing on urban visions and spatial scenarios for Tallinn.
“Architects there painted a picture of what Lasnamäe could ideally look like and when you look at those plans, you see a modern urban environment that could realistically be created there. Of course, all of that requires funding,” Tammaru noted.
When thinking about an attractive modern urban environment, the professor said Tallinn’s so-called “hill districts” (Mustamäe, Õismäe, Lasnamäe – ed.) already have many advantages: they are compact, not too far from the city center and offer many local services.
“On the other hand, the apartment buildings remain unrenovated and in poor condition and there is no real center there. Those aspects work against it,” he said.
“Looking at the positive side, apartments built during the Soviet era generally became more spacious with each stage of construction and the layouts are often not bad at all. While a modern two-room apartment today might be 30 square meters, one in Lasnamäe may be as large as 50 square meters. Architects believe it is entirely possible to create a contemporary urban environment there,” he added.
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