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The universality in urban commuting across and within cities

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Listed:
  • Lei Dong
  • Paolo Santi
  • Yu Liu
  • Siqi Zheng
  • Carlo Ratti

Abstract

Commuting is a key mechanism that governs the dynamics of cities. Despite its importance, very little is known of the properties and mechanisms underlying this crucial urban process. Here, we capitalize on $\sim$ 50 million individuals' smartphone data from 234 Chinese cities to show that urban commuting obeys remarkable regularities. These regularities can be generalized as two laws: (i) the scale-invariance of the average commuting distance across cities, which is a long-awaited validation of Marchetti's constant conjecture, and (ii) a universal inverted U-shape of the commuting distance as a function of the distance from the city centre within cities, indicating that the city centre's attraction is bounded. Motivated by such empirical findings, we develop a simple urban growth model that connects individual-level mobility choices with macroscopic urban spatial structure and faithfully explains both commuting laws. Our results further show that the scale-invariants of human mobility will ultimately lead to the polycentric transition in cities, which could be used to better inform urban development strategies.

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  • Lei Dong & Paolo Santi & Yu Liu & Siqi Zheng & Carlo Ratti, 2022. "The universality in urban commuting across and within cities," Papers 2204.12865, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2204.12865
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Alex Anas & Richard Arnott & Kenneth A. Small, 1998. "Urban Spatial Structure," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 36(3), pages 1426-1464, September.
    2. Thomas Louail & Maxime Lenormand & Miguel Picornell & Oliva García Cantú & Ricardo Herranz & Enrique Frias-Martinez & José J. Ramasco & Marc Barthelemy, 2015. "Uncovering the spatial structure of mobility networks," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 6(1), pages 1-8, May.
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