Planning for isolation? The role of urban form and function in shaping mobility in Brasilia

TL;DR

This study examines how urban form and function in Brasilia influence mobility and segregation, revealing that spatial design and amenities significantly impact social mixing and separation at various scales.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how urban morphology and amenities affect segregation and mobility patterns in a planned capital, highlighting the importance of shared destinations and connectivity.

Findings

Segregation increases at finer spatial scales.

Mobility reduces home segregation for most users, especially the poor.

Shared amenities and porous connections promote integration.

Abstract

Bras\'ilia offers a rare test of how urban form shapes experienced segregation. Built almost at once around modernist neighbourhood units, then expanded through planned satellites and informal peripheries, it lets us ask whether urban form turns mobility into mixing or into a more efficient engine of separation. We combine data on human mobility with urban morphometrics, amenities, road networks, along with enclosures and tessellations that capture segregation at the scales where access is structured: districts, neighbourhoods, blocks, and street-and-building cells. We find that segregation intensifies as resolution sharpens, from 0.282 at the district scale to 0.545 at the block scale, indicating that Bras\'ilia looks most integrated at coarse units and most segregated where everyday encounters are actually organised. Mobility softens home segregation for most users, but not symmetrically: poorer groups travel farther, while affluent groups remain the most selectively exposed. civic cores and mid-rise, mixed-use areas are the least segregated morphotypes, yet they occupy only a sliver of the metropolis. Elsewhere, rich lakefront suburbs and dense poor settlements reach similarly high segregation through opposite spatial logics. Amenities predict lower segregation, while barriers and enclosed residential interiors predict higher segregation. Built form explains more of this pattern than visit volume alone in the segregation models: integration is less a property of residential design than of shared destinations and porous connections. Planned capitals can build order without building isolation if they distribute mixing space rather than sequestering it.