Suburbanisation has been a prevalent process of post-war, capitalist urban growth, leading to the majority of citizens in many advanced capitalist economies currently living in the suburbs. We are also witnessing however the reverse movement of the increasing return to the inner-city. This contradiction raises questions regarding the socio-spatial production of current suburbanisation.
This paper draws on the case of suburban, new town Almere in the metropolitan region of Amsterdam to cast light upon the changing suburban-urban relationship, by investigating the mobility to and from Almere for two decades through municipal data. We demonstrate that Almere has developed from a typically suburban family community in the 1980s, to nowadays a receiver of both international unmarried newcomers and families, emphasizing alternative types of mobilities emerging in concert to the more typical suburban migration. The town’s transformation challenges the urban-suburban dichotomy, pointing to alternative explanations of contemporary urban growth and metropolitan integration.