What is a City?
How to define its boundaries ? How to measure its delineation ?
We advocate that data from the 7 billion cell-phone users in the world can
help us answer these questions.
Cities have transformed from market-centric hubs in ancient Sumeria to modern metropolises shaped by
transportation and technology. The definition and delineation of a city is crucial to manage it. However,
these
definitions and delineations tend to be static and often overlook the crucial element of human flows. After
all.
'what is the city but the people ?'
This paper advocates for considering thepresence and flows of peopleas the essential features of what a city is, and proposes cell phone data as a universal proxy for defining cities. While acknowledging limitations, such as data privacy and potential biases, we assert that leveraging cell-phone data would enhance global comparisons of cities, offering invaluable insights to the research community.
This paper advocates for considering thepresence and flows of peopleas the essential features of what a city is, and proposes cell phone data as a universal proxy for defining cities. While acknowledging limitations, such as data privacy and potential biases, we assert that leveraging cell-phone data would enhance global comparisons of cities, offering invaluable insights to the research community.
Explore how the lab has been using cell phone data to define and delineate cities
globally.
Learn more in the inaugural issue of
Nature Cities
Nature Cities
Team
Research
MIT Senseable City Lab
Paolo Santi, Fábio Duarte, Carlo Ratti
Lei Dong, Peking University
Yu Liu, Peking University
Gilles Duranton, University of Pennsylvania
Marc Barthelemy, CNRS/EHESS
Denise Pumain, CNRS/EHESS
Michael Batty, University College London
Luis Bettencourt, University of Chicago
Michael Goodchild, University of California Santa Barbara
Gary Hack, Massachussets Institute of Technology
Denise Pumain, Universite Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
Wenzhong Shi, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Anthony Yeh, Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Website Design
Chada Elalami
Nikita Klimenko
Publication
Dong, L., Duarte, F., Duranton, G. et al. (2024).
Defining a city : delineating urban areas using cell-phone data.
Nature Cities.
Press
The material on this web site can be used freely in any publication provided that :
1. It is duly credited as a project by the MIT Senseable City Lab
2. A PDF copy of the publication is sent to senseable-press@mit.edu
senseable-contacts@mit.edu