Comparing and modeling land use organization in cities

TL;DR

This paper uses mobile phone data and a functional network approach to identify and compare land use patterns across Spanish cities, revealing universal and local differences in urban land organization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method combining geolocated ICT data and network analysis to classify land use types and models their spatial organization with a Schelling-inspired segregation model.

Findings

Four major land use types identified with distinct temporal patterns

Universal land use organization patterns across cities at a broad scale

Local land use mixing varies significantly between cities

Abstract

The advent of geolocated ICT technologies opens the possibility of exploring how people use space in cities, bringing an important new tool for urban scientists and planners, especially for regions where data is scarce or not available. Here we apply a functional network approach to determine land use patterns from mobile phone records. The versatility of the method allows us to run a systematic comparison between Spanish cities of various sizes. The method detects four major land use types that correspond to different temporal patterns. The proportion of these types, their spatial organization and scaling show a strong similarity between all cities that breaks down at a very local scale, where land use mixing is specific to each urban area. Finally, we introduce a model inspired by Schelling's segregation, able to explain and reproduce these results with simple interaction rules between different land uses.