Social segregation revealed by big mobility data

Funded by the Swedish Research Council (No. 2022-06215), this project aims to use big data on human mobility to better understand social segregation in cities. The project will use advanced techniques to study how social segregation is affected by mobility, the built environment, and residence characteristics in different regions, to support effective policies and urban planning that promote diversity and address inequality issues. The research project aims to provide new insights into social segregation and support policies that go beyond the boundaries of residential areas. The significance and scientific novelty lie in the below two aspects:

1. Profound insights into how experienced social segregation distributes in global regions at an unprecedentedly high spatiotemporal resolution, a big step forward beyond our understanding of residential segregation;

2. Innovative explanations of social segregation by built environment, mobility behaviours, and housing, which can be used to make effective place-based policies and transport planning to mitigate segregation and inequalities in today’s urban systems.

Social segregation is a crucial issue for our societies, drawing increasing attention due to the rising level of inequalities in modern cities. Not only the project has the potential to dramatically change how we understand social segregation in cities from a scientific standpoint. Also, it could help develop novel solution to mitigate it through effective planning for sustainable and inclusive mobility systems.

This three-year project will be managed and implemented by Dr. Yuan Liao with the administrative organization, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and the host organization Technical University of Denmark, Denmark. Dr. Yuan Liao will be collaborating with the three mentors:

• Dr. Sonia Yeh, Department of Space, Earth and Environment, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
• Dr. Jorge Gil, Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden
• Dr. Laura Alessandretti, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
• Dr. Rafael H. M. Pereira, Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea) - Brazil, Department of Urban, Regional and Environmental studies and policies (DIRUR), Brazil

We make all studies open-source on our GitHub page.