Incorporating Human Mobility and Urban Morphology in Neighborhood Boundary Delineations

Korte inhoud:Although neighborhoods are a central concept in urban-geographical and social-scientific research, our understanding of them remains simultaneously specific and vague. Our understanding is specific in that we know neighborhoods exist as people often think about, make sense of, and engage with their cities through the lens of neighborhoods. We also know that neighborhoods can influence people's life choices and wellbeing. However, it is often vague and unclear where one neighborhood ends, and another one begins. This lack of clarity is problematic because neighborhood boundaries are a practical requirement of much quantitative empirical research. Using the 'wrong' boundaries can bias results and hamper planning and policy interventions. This dissertation engages with the long-standing and intractable problem of identifying and delineating the 'right' neighborhood boundaries. Neighborhood boundaries are often conceptualized by people in relation to their lives. People have an intuitive, yet often implicit, understanding of who is part of 'their' neighborhood and where neighborhood boundaries are. This multitude of boundaries is challenging to use in research. Seeking standardization, researchers look to other means of delineating neighborhoods. They rely on administrative units, which may be distinct from neighborhood conceptualizations, or on approaches that narrow neighborhood conceptualizations down to just one dimension, often proximity in Euclidean terms. Such approaches assume that proximate individuals form communities without considering the presence of morphological (e.g., buildings and streets) and natural (e.g., canals and rivers) barriers. More recently, researchers have drawn on the affordances of novel big mobility datasets to proxy communities and delineate neighborhoods. However, the adoption of such methods remains nascent. Against this backdrop, this dissertation approaches the problem of delineating neighborhoods by advancing two central ideas: (1) neighborhoods can be conceptualized in relation to people's interactions borne of their daily mobility, and (2) the morphology of cities influences such interactions. Using these ideas, this dissertation develops neighborhood delineation methods for two applications: first, to use in studying socio-spatial processes such as segregation, and second, for studying neighborhoods themselves. Specifically, neighborhoods are identified as regions accessible within a certain travel time, taking the city's morphological structure into account. These neighborhoods are delineated at multiple scales and are used in concert with administrative divisions, to examine how people experience ethnic segregation in different areas and on different scales. Additionally, neighborhoods are delineated as consisting of multiple dimensions, allowing for the customization of neighborhood boundaries to meet specific research needs. Neighborhood boundaries are also conceptualized as having different intensities, inversely corresponding to the flows of people between adjacent neighborhoods. These intensities provide insights into the relationships among residents of different neighborhoods offering a more nuanced understanding of inter-neighborhood segregation. Drawing on the combined utility of this work, a set of guidelines is developed to assist researchers in incorporating mobility and morphology into neighborhood delineations.

Jaar van publicatie:2025

Toegankelijkheid:Embargoed