Ranking dynamics of urban mobility

Hao Wang

Journal of Transport Geography, 2025, vol. 128, issue C

Abstract: Human mobility, a pivotal aspect of urban dynamics, displays a profound and multifaceted relationship with urban sustainability. Despite considerable efforts analyzing mobility patterns over decades, the ranking dynamics of urban mobility has received limited attention. This study aims to contribute to the field by investigating changes in rank and size of hourly inflows to various locations across 60 Chinese cities throughout the day. We find that the rank–size distribution of hourly inflows over the course of the day is stable across cities. To uncover the microdynamics beneath the stable aggregate distribution amidst shifting location inflows, we analyzed consecutive-hour inflow size and ranking variations. Our findings reveal a dichotomy: locations with higher daily average inflow display a clear monotonic trend, with more pronounced increases or decreases in consecutive-hour inflow. In contrast, ranking variations exhibit a non-monotonic pattern, characterized by the stability not only of the top and bottom rankings, but also of mid-ranked locations in certain cities. Finally, we compare ranking dynamics across land use types and cities. The results advance our understanding of urban mobility dynamics, providing a basis for applications in urban planning and traffic engineering.

Keywords: Urban mobility; Ranking dynamics; Rank–size distribution; Mobile phone data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692325002224

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:eee:jotrge:v:128:y:2025:i:c:s0966692325002224

DOI: 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2025.104331

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Transport Geography is currently edited by Frank Witlox

More articles in Journal of Transport Geography from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().