Understanding Urban Economies, Land Use, and Social Dynamics in the City: Big Data and Measurement

Albert Saiz and Arianna Salazar-Miranda
Additional contact information
Arianna Salazar-Miranda: MIT

No 16501, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Recent advancements in data collection have expanded the tools and information available for urban and spatial-based research. This paper presents an overview of spatial big data sources used in urban science and urban economics, with the goal of directing and enriching future research by other applied economists. We structure our discussion around data origins and analytical methods, discussing geographic information maps, GPS and CDR, textual repositories, social media, credit card transactions, street imagery, sensor readings, volumetric data, street patterns, transportation metrics, public records, geocoded historical data, business analytics, real estate transactions, and crowdsourced input. While aiming to provide an overarching perspective, we also touch upon common challenges in urban big data research, especially those unique to data collection, analysis, and inference.

Keywords: urban; big; data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C80 J01 R00 R32 R58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2023-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-big and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp16501.pdf (application/pdf)

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:iza:izadps:dp16501

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().