01518792

Component

In this paper, the authors argue that spatial proximity, measured in residential distance, though still matters, probably is not the most important facilitator for social interactions. People’s mobility patterns, both at an individual level and at a pair level, can be an equally important factor if not more. The authors tested this hypothesis by utilizing a unique mobile phone dataset with both location information and calling information for a large urbanized city in China. Through this dataset, the authors are able to identify social ties as well as calculate various measures on spatial proximity and mobility patterns. The analyses were carried out both at the individual level for the number of social ties and at the pair level for the strength of a tie. The results appear to confirm the hypothesis: social ties, both in terms of scope (number of social ties) and strength, are closely related to mobility patterns attributes; more than to the spatial proximity measure. The authors also evaluate the role of the built environment in affecting social ties and show that though living in a dense area can potentially increase the number of social ties, but the effect is very small. There are two simple takeaways from the paper: first, if you want to have more friends, visit new places often; you do not need to travel far though; second, if you want to strengthen an existing tie, visit new places often and those places that will bring your mobility pattern closer to that of the other party.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADB10 Traveler Behavior and Values.

01503729

14-4787

English

21p

2014

Transportation Research Board 93rd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; References; Tables

Cities; Mobile telephones; Mobility; Social factors; Spatial analysis; Travel patterns

China

Planning and Forecasting; Society; Transportation (General); I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2014 Paper #14-4787

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jan 27 2014 3:40PM