Characterizing Urban Lifestyle Signatures Using Motif Properties in Network of Places

Abstract

The lifestyles of urban dwellers could reveal important insights regarding the dynamics and complexity of cities. The availability of human movement data, anonymized and aggregated data captured from cell phone movement, enables characterization of distinct and recurrent human daily visitation patterns. Despite a growing body of research on analysis and evaluation of lifestyle patterns in cities, little is known about the characteristics of people's lifestyles patterns at urban scale. This limitation is primarily due to challenges in characterizing lifestyle patterns when human movement data is aggregated to protect the privacy of users. To address this gap, in this study, we model cities based on aggregated human visitation data to construct a network of places. We then examine the subgraph signatures (i.e., motifs) in the networks of places to map and characterize lifestyle patterns at city scale. Location-based data from Harris County, Dallas County, New York County, and Broward County in the United States were examined to reveal lifestyle signatures in cities. For the motif analysis, two-node, three-node, and four-node motifs without location attributes were extracted from human visitation networks. Second, homogenized nodes in motifs were encoded with location categories from NAICS codes. Multiple statistical measures, including network metrics and motif properties, were quantified to characterize lifestyle signatures. The results show that: i) people's lifestyles in urban environments can be well depicted and quantified based on distribution and attributes of motifs in networks of places; ii) motifs in networks of places show stability in quantity and distance as well as periodicity on weekends and weekdays indicating the stability of lifestyle patterns in cities; iii) human visitation networks and lifestyle patterns show similarities across different metropolitan areas implying the universality of lifestyle signatures across cities; iv) lifestyles represented by attributed motifs are spatially heterogeneous suggesting variations of lifestyle patterns within different population groups based on where they live in a city. The findings provide deeper insights into urban lifestyles signatures in urban studies and provide important insights for data-informed urban planning and management.