Bedroom community

A bedroom community, dormitory town, or commuter town is a town or city that is primarily residential in character, with most of its residents commuting to a nearby town or city to earn their livelihood. For this reason, many countries refer to these settlements as commuter towns.

The distinction between a suburb and a bedroom community is not always clear, but as a general rule suburbs are developed in areas adjacent to main employment centers, whereas bedroom communities once were autonomous places that over time attracted a predominance of commuters. Bedroom communities may be in rural or semi-rural areas, but urban sprawl and conurbation have erased clear lines among towns and cities in large metropolitan areas.

Bedroom communities can arise for a number of different reasons. Sometimes, a town might lose its main source of employment, leading its residents to seek work elsewhere.

Other communities start as small villages in rural areas, where employees seek to have a home that is beyond noisy urban life. The locals are often displaced by these commuters due to rising house prices and new housing estates. This can also be influenced by zoning restrictions in urbanized areas that prevent the construction of suitable housing closer to places of employment.

The number of dormitory towns has increased in the UK since the 1960s because of a trend for people to move out of the cities into the surrounding green belt.