The Fragility of Urban Social Networks - Mobility as a City Glue -

Pierre Magontier

Diskussionsschriften from Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft - CRED

Abstract: Social interactions are crucial to a city's cohesion, and the high frequency of interaction reflects many benefits of density. However, adverse environmental conditions, such as pollution or pandemics, may critically affect these interactions as they shift preferences over meeting locations and partners. Some interactions may be shifted to the virtual space, while other non-planned interactions may disappear. We analyze spatial interaction networks in Singapore covering about half of the adult population at a fine-grained spatial resolution to understand the importance of population mixing and places' amenities for urban network resilience. We document that environmental shocks negatively affect total interactions. Still, conditional on meeting physically, the number and type of location options may crucially impact the intensity and type of social interactions. The interplay between preferences for meetings partners, locations, and mobility determines population mixing and the fragility of urban social networks.

Keywords: Urban interactions; networks; mobility; environmental shocks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L14 R1 R2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-net, nep-sea, nep-soc and nep-ure
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