Shifting Patterns of Social Interaction: Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through A.I

Arianna Salazar-Miranda, Zhuangyuan Fan, Michael B. Baick, Keith N. Hampton, Fabio Duarte, Becky P.Y. Loo, Edward Glaeser and Carlo Ratti

No 33185, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We analyze changes in pedestrian behavior over a 30-year period in four urban public spaces located in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Building on William Whyte's observational work from 1980, where he manually recorded pedestrian behaviors, we employ computer vision and deep learning techniques to examine video footage from 1979-80 and 2008-10. Our analysis measures changes in walking speed, lingering behavior, group sizes, and group formation. We find that the average walking speed has increased by 15%, while the time spent lingering in these spaces has halved across all locations. Although the percentage of pedestrians walking alone remained relatively stable (from 67% to 68%), the frequency of group encounters declined, indicating fewer interactions in public spaces. This shift suggests that urban residents increasingly view streets as thoroughfares rather than as social spaces, which has important implications for the role of public spaces in fostering social engagement.

JEL-codes: R41 Z13 Z30 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ure
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33185.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33185

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33185
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).