US cities segregated not just by where people live, but where they travel daily
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- One thing that decades of social science research has made abundantly clear? Americans in urban areas live in neighborhoods deeply segregated by race -- and they always have.
Less clear, however, is whether city-dwellers stay segregated when they leave home and go about their daily routines. That's a question to which Jennifer Candipan, an assistant professor of sociology at Brown University, was determined to find an answer.
By analyzing geotagged locations for more than 133 million tweets by 375,000 Twitter users in the 50 largest U.S. cities, Candipan and a team of researchers found that in most urban areas, people of different races don't just live in different neighborhoods -- they also eat, drink, shop, socialize and travel in different neighborhoods.
"Most of us can sense that segregation is about more than where people live -- it's also about how they move," Candipan said. "With the recent availability of data from global positioning systems, satellite imaging and social media, we've been able to start quantifying that segregated movement in cities. In combination with existing measures, we've been able to provide a fuller picture of racial inequality and segregation in America's cities."
Candipan, who is affiliated with Brown's END
Less clear, however, is whether city-dwellers stay segregated when they leave home and go about their daily routines. That's a question to which Jennifer Candipan, an assistant professor of sociology at Brown University, was determined to find an answer.
By analyzing geotagged locations for more than 133 million tweets by 375,000 Twitter users in the 50 largest U.S. cities, Candipan and a team of researchers found that in most urban areas, people of different races don't just live in different neighborhoods -- they also eat, drink, shop, socialize and travel in different neighborhoods.
"Most of us can sense that segregation is about more than where people live -- it's also about how they move," Candipan said. "With the recent availability of data from global positioning systems, satellite imaging and social media, we've been able to start quantifying that segregated movement in cities. In combination with existing measures, we've been able to provide a fuller picture of racial inequality and segregation in America's cities."
Candipan, who is affiliated with Brown's END