A study explores urban mobility and neighborhood isolation in 50 large cities in the United States. Neighborhood segregation in cities is a well-recognized phenomenon, but the extent of isolation of residents in disadvantaged neighborhoods from resource-rich neighborhoods remains unclear. Qi Wang and colleagues used social media messages to study urban mobility in 50 of the largest US cities. The authors analyzed more than 650 million geocoded Twitter messages to identify nearly 400,000 city residents and deduce their travel from October 2013 to March 2015. The geocoded messages enabled the authors to determine the users' mobility patterns within each city's commuting zone. The study revealed high consistency in the average travel distance and number of neighborhoods visited among individuals from neighborhoods of different racial and income characteristics. However, significant differences emerged in the composition of neighborhoods visited regardless of the residents' income levels, with residents of primarily black and Hispanic neighborhoods being less likely than residents of primarily white neighborhoods to travel to nonpoor or white middle-class neighborhoods. Furthermore, residents of poor white neighborhoods were consistently isolated from nonpoor white neighborhoods. The study suggests that residential isolation and segregation persist even though residents of disadvantaged and advantaged neighborhoods exhibit similar urban mobility profiles. The findings carry implications for understanding interactions across urban neighborhoods, according to the authors.
Article #18-02537: "Urban mobility and neighborhood isolation in America's 50 largest cities," by Qi Wang, Nolan Phillips, Mario Small, and Robert Sampson.
MEDIA CONTACT: Qi Wang, Northeastern University, Boston, MA; tel: 517-643-5349; e-mail: <q.wang@northeastern.edu>
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