The recent interest in Organization Studies towards spatial issues tends to neglect analyzing users, consumers or citizens experiences of proximity. Focusing on this perspective helps to better adapt organizations to their expectations as well as actual or future practices. Our paper addresses this gap by analyzing how inhabitants in an urban area “live” the proximity to reach the hospital when they have the choice between two similar facilities located at similar distance. Quantifying individual patterns in a situation of comparable choice offers the opportunity to measure the relevant variables that ultimately play a role in users’ daily experience of proximity. Our research is based on a real case exploiting mass data in an urban area. We reveal that subjective proximity depends from two main variables: poverty conditions and the boundaries defining people’s activities. This research provides managerial contributions in the field of health economy as well as theoretical contributions on the extent to which space matters for users in public activities, revisiting the role of proximities, between subjectivity, contexts and boundaries.
