Social areas revisited through the lens of mobility: A comparative study of the traditional and mobility approaches

Social area analysis is a framework for understanding residential social structure as a product of urbanization and economic development. Building on our previous findings that socioeconomically similar residents exhibit different mobility patterns, this study examines urban socio-spatial structure by incorporating commuting patterns from mobile phone data with census in Shenzhen, China. We conduct a comparative analysis to explore differences between the traditional and mobility approaches. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) results reveal that mobility is an essential dimension of socio-spatial differentiation at the aggregated neighborhood committee level. The derived residential social structure explicitly highlights mobility disparities, providing evidence for possible segregation and potential improvements in urban planning. By analyzing the interplays of economic, political, and social forces, we conceptualize mobility as a sub-dimension of social space. The contribution of this study lies in two folds. First, we propose a framework for integrating mobile phone data with census data to capture mobility disparities at the aggregated level with the concept of activity space. Second, we explore the role of mobility in delineating urban socio-spatial structure, providing a novel perspective for examining the internal spatial structure of cities.