Dataset Information

A city of cities: Measuring how 15-minutes urban accessibility shapes human mobility in Barcelona.

ABSTRACT: As cities expand, human mobility has become a central focus of urban planning and policy making to make cities more inclusive and sustainable. Initiatives such as the "15-minutes city" have been put in place to shift the attention from monocentric city configurations to polycentric structures, increasing the availability and diversity of local urban amenities. Ultimately they expect to increase local walkability and increase mobility within residential areas. While we know how urban amenities influence human mobility at the city level, little is known about spatial variations in this relationship. Here, we use mobile phone, census, and volunteered geographical data to measure geographic variations in the relationship between origin-destination flows and local urban accessibility in Barcelona. Using a Negative Binomial Geographically Weighted Regression model, we show that, globally, people tend to visit neighborhoods with better access to education and retail. Locally, these and other features change in sign and magnitude through the different neighborhoods of the city in ways that are not explained by administrative boundaries, and that provide deeper insights regarding urban characteristics such as rental prices. In conclusion, our work suggests that the qualities of a 15-minutes city can be measured at scale, delivering actionable insights on the polycentric structure of cities, and how people use and access this structure.

SUBMITTER: Graells-Garrido E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8099121 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Accessible urban nature is a key component of creating sustainable urban communities and promoting human health and well-being. To balance the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, the United Nations adopted several sustainable developmental goals (SDGs), such as SDG 11 for sustainable cities and communities, which aims to improve urban planning and management, including equitable access to urban nature. However, more information is still needed regarding how planners and managers can promote urban nature visitation and equitable access during health and environmental crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to examine trends in urban nature visitation during the pandemic and then to determine if the effect of the pandemic on the frequency of urban nature site visitation varied by distance to home, using an innovative approach of analyzing both publicly available large-scale mobility data and a web-based survey of urban residents of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. The mobility data results showed that there was a negative mean % difference in park visits compared to baseline during the first and third lockdowns, but an increase compared to baseline between lockdowns and even during the second lockdown. This suggests that urban residents had greater need to reconnect with urban nature during and after periods of intense stress. In addition, the survey results showed an increasing negative effect of distance on urban nature site visitation during the pandemic, specifically for urban nature sites located more than 1 km from home. Altogether, the mobility data and survey results suggest that people who lived within 1 km of their preferred urban nature site had disproportionate access to the benefits of urban nature during and after lockdowns than others. To effectively make social and ecological transitions toward urban sustainability, it is vital that cities promote urban nature accessibility during current and future environmental and health crises. Cities should collaborate with diverse stakeholders to create/maintain accessible urban nature sites nearby all sociodemographic groups, provide sustainability education and training to convey the benefits of urban nature, and pursue participatory solutions for understanding urban nature needs and preferences. In this manner, it will be possible to address the growing influence of proximity/travel distance and additional factors that affect urban nature visitation and ultimately, human health and urban sustainability.

Project description:BackgroundInfectious diseases spread through inherently spatial processes. Road and air traffic data have been used to model these processes at national and global scales. At metropolitan scales, however, mobility patterns are fundamentally different and less directly observable. Estimating the spatial distribution of infection has public health utility, but few studies have investigated this at an urban scale. In this study we address the question of whether the use of urban-scale mobility data can improve the prediction of spatial patterns of influenza infection. We compare the use of different sources of urban-scale mobility data, and investigate the impact of other factors relevant to modelling mobility, including mixing within and between regions, and the influence of hub and spoke commuting patterns.MethodsWe used journey-to-work (JTW) data from the Australian 2011 Census, and GPS journey data from the Sygic GPS Navigation & Maps mobile app, to characterise population mixing patterns in a spatially-explicit SEIR (susceptible, exposed, infectious, recovered) meta-population model.ResultsUsing the JTW data to train the model leads to an increase in the proportion of infections that arise in central Melbourne, which is indicative of the city's spoke-and-hub road and public transport networks, and of the commuting patterns reflected in these data. Using the GPS data increased the infections in central Melbourne to a lesser extent than the JTW data, and produced a greater heterogeneity in the middle and outer regions. Despite the limitations of both mobility data sets, the model reproduced some of the characteristics observed in the spatial distribution of reported influenza cases.ConclusionsUrban mobility data sets can be used to support models that capture spatial heterogeneity in the transmission of infectious diseases at a metropolitan scale. These data should be adjusted to account for relevant urban features, such as highly-connected hubs where the resident population is likely to experience a much lower force of infection that the transient population. In contrast to national and international scales, the relationship between mobility and infection at an urban level is much less apparent, and requires a richer characterisation of population mobility and contact.

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A city of cities: Measuring how 15-minutes urban accessibility shapes human mobility in Barcelona.

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