Introductioǹ`I n today's Dublin, you wouldn't need a novelist's omniscience to follow Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus, and Buck Mulligan around the city; you could just track their cell phone usage. And if Leopold could get access to the logs, he could figure out precisely what Molly was up to.'' Mitchell (2003, page 116) Whether you are a techno-enthusiast or not, Mitchell's (2003) e-topia has certainly become a reality in the field of mobile communications. Just look at data from the booming mobile communications industry. According to the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO, 2004), cell phone subscriptions in Western Europe reached 350 million in 2003 (157 million in the USA). In Italy, where the case studies presented in this paper are located, the number of users is approximately 54 million (EITO , 2004)öthat is, the second largest market in Europe after Germany. Furthermore, with a total population of 57 million, Italy has one of the highest penetrations of mobile devices in the world. Why should the urban planning community be interested in the aforementioned data? First, the widespread deployment of mobile communications, supported by personal handheld electronics, is having a significant impact on urban life. People are changing their social and working habits because of the new technology (Rheingold, 2002). Activities that once required a fixed location and connection can now be achieved with higher flexibility, which results in the users' ability to act and move more freely [for an analysis in the corporate working domain, see Duffy (1997)]. As a consequence, urban dynamics are becoming more complex and require new analysis techniques. Second, and more importantly in this context, data based on the location

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