Universal expansion of human mobility across urban scales

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhong, Lu, Dong, Lei, Wang, Qi, Song, Chaoming, Gao, Jianxi
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Zhong, Lu
Dong, Lei
Wang, Qi
Song, Chaoming
Gao, Jianxi
author_facet Zhong, Lu
Dong, Lei
Wang, Qi
Song, Chaoming
Gao, Jianxi
contents Human mobility is a fundamental process underpinning socioeconomic life and urban structure. Classic theories, such as egocentric activity spaces and central place theory, provide crucial insights into specific facets of movement, like home-centricity and hierarchical spatial organization. However, identifying universal characteristics or an underlying principle that quantitatively links these disparate perspectives has remained a challenge. Here, we reveal such a connection by analyzing the spatial structure of individual daily mobility trajectories using network-based modules. We discover a universal scaling law: the spatial extent (radius) of these mobility modules expands sublinearly with increasing distance from home, a pattern consistent across three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these modules precisely map onto the nested hierarchy of urban systems, corresponding to local, city-level, and regional scales as distance from home increases. These findings deepen our understanding of human mobility dynamics and demonstrate the profound connection between classical urban theory, human geography, and mobility studies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_06889
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Universal expansion of human mobility across urban scales
Zhong, Lu
Dong, Lei
Wang, Qi
Song, Chaoming
Gao, Jianxi
Physics and Society
Social and Information Networks
Human mobility is a fundamental process underpinning socioeconomic life and urban structure. Classic theories, such as egocentric activity spaces and central place theory, provide crucial insights into specific facets of movement, like home-centricity and hierarchical spatial organization. However, identifying universal characteristics or an underlying principle that quantitatively links these disparate perspectives has remained a challenge. Here, we reveal such a connection by analyzing the spatial structure of individual daily mobility trajectories using network-based modules. We discover a universal scaling law: the spatial extent (radius) of these mobility modules expands sublinearly with increasing distance from home, a pattern consistent across three orders of magnitude. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these modules precisely map onto the nested hierarchy of urban systems, corresponding to local, city-level, and regional scales as distance from home increases. These findings deepen our understanding of human mobility dynamics and demonstrate the profound connection between classical urban theory, human geography, and mobility studies.
title Universal expansion of human mobility across urban scales
topic Physics and Society
Social and Information Networks
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.06889