The Impossible Trinity of Human Space Usage between Home, Workplace and Amenity

TL;DR

This study introduces an 'impossible trinity' model to explain shifts in human space usage during COVID-19, revealing increased at-home and amenity visits and decreased workplace visits, influenced by preferences, constraints, and accessibility.

Contribution

It presents a novel trinity framework to analyze mobility patterns and demonstrates how WFH affects space usage inequality across income groups.

Findings

At-home and amenity visits increased during COVID-19.

Workplace visits decreased during COVID-19.

Wfh improved amenity usage equality among income groups.

Abstract

We propose an impossible trinity of human space usage between home, workplace, and amenity in this paper to explain mobility pattern changes and shifts in demand for space during COVID-19. We developed detailed time usage and location visit profiles for 60,131 people in England and Wales by analyzing about 120 million cell phone location and timestamp records on March 2020 and March 2021. We found that both at-home time and amenity visits increased during COVID-19, while workplace visits decreased. Individual visits to different locations are determined by three key factors: individual preference measured by pre-pandemic location visit frequency, time constraints influenced by work-from-home, and space accessibility. We also find that WFH improves equality of individual amenity usage between people of different incomes. Low-income and middle-income people saw an 8% and 4% increase in additional amenity visits, respectively, compared to high-income people during the pandemic.