Work

Awakening city: exploring urban spatial center structure and mobility patterns based on flow vector

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Intra-urban population mobility is influenced by both geographical distance and opportunity accessibility, while being governed by the gravitational pull of urban centers. This phenomenon becomes particularly pronounced during morning rush hours, when population flows exhibit heightened activity and distinct central orientation, profoundly reflecting the city’s spatial structure and functional organization. Building upon high-precision population mobility data, this study constructs movement vectors to systematically analyze the spatial relationships between population flows and urban centers. Our analysis identifies three distinct patterns of morning peak-hour population mobility: strongly centripetal, bidirectional interactive, and self-organizing types. Building upon this foundation, we further investigated how urban centrality shapes population mobility patterns and spatial functionality. Through integrated spatial clustering analysis and interpretable machine learning modeling, we quantitatively validated the distance-decay effect of central influence while systematically elucidating the functional roles of distinct travel modes in macro-scale centripetal flows.

Source: Journal of Physics Complexity

DOI: 10.1088/2632-072x/ae20e8