Collaborative Research: Interaction Potential and the Social and Economic Vibrancy of Metropolitan Regions

该研究项目将研究城市空间结构如何影响社会互动潜力（SIP），即人们进行面对面接触的能力。该项目的主要目标是确定城市空间结构的哪些要素限制或支持SIP，并量化SIP影响社会和经济活力的程度。 研究人员将开发一种新的衡量SIP的指标，并将用它来发现SIP如何在大都市地区内和之间变化，以确定空间结构如何影响这些测量，并量化SIP的区域内和区域间社会经济结果。 SIP指标将使用联合可访问性的时间-地理概念来量化社交互动的机会，在给定一组约束条件的情况下，两个人可以在同一地点和时间的容易程度。 使用大量现成的旅行行为样本数据，将为美国人口超过100万的所有大都市地区计算该指标。 区域尺度空间结构对社会互动机会的作用在文献中只受到有限的关注，但了解这种关系的复杂性将大大推进城市区域地理如何在竞争日益激烈的环境中培养活力的基本知识，全球化的世界。这项研究需要密集的计算，并将应用大规模并行计算资源，以加强对城市社会的基本知识，经济进程。 这些计算的结果将显示城市空间结构的要素如何与SIP相关，并将能够测试SIP是否与社会和经济活力指标在统计上相关。该项目将为人类环境的空间方面如何影响区域社会和经济提供新的视角。 它将有助于评估城市空间结构是否可以用来使城市更具创新性、整合性、互动性和包容性。 此外，时间地理学，最初开发的方法，探索个人层面的时空轨迹，将被用来调查区域规模的结果，从而扩大和潜在的改变时间地理方法可以应用于城市分析。该项目将提供新的信息、见解和方法，通过更好的土地使用和交通政策，增强大都市地区的社会经济活力。 该项目还将为研究生和本科生提供教育和研究机会。

This research project will examine how urban spatial structure affects social interaction potential (SIP), the ability for people to make face-to-face contact. The project's primary goals are to determine which elements of the urban spatial structure restrict or support SIP and to quantify the degree to which SIP affects social and economic vibrancy. The researchers will develop a new metric for measuring SIP and will use it to discover how SIP varies within and between metropolitan regions, to determine how spatial structure influences these measurements, and to quantify the intra- and inter-regional socioeconomic outcomes attributable to SIP. The SIP metric will quantify the opportunities for social interaction using the time-geographic concept of joint-accessibility, the ease with which two people can be at the same place and time given a set of constraints. Using large, readily available sample travel behavior data, the metric will be computed for all metropolitan regions in the United States with populations greater than one million people. The role of regional-scale spatial structure on social interaction opportunities has seen only limited attention in the literature, yet understanding the complexities of this relationship will greatly advance basic knowledge of how the geography of urban regions can foster vitality in an increasingly competitive, globalized world.This research requires intensive computation and will apply massively parallel computational resources to enhance basic knowledge about urban social and economic processes. The output of these computations will show how elements of the urban spatial structure relate to SIP and will enable tests of whether SIP is statistically associated with indicators of social and economic vibrancy. The project will provide new perspectives regarding how spatial aspects of the human environment affect regional societies and economies. It will help assess whether urban spatial structure can be used to make cities more innovative, integrated, interactive, and inclusive. In addition, time geography, a method originally developed to explore individual-level time-space trajectories, will be used to investigate regional-scale outcomes, thus expanding and potentially transforming how time geographic methods can be applied in urban analyses. This project will provide new information, insights, and methods that may enhance the socioeconomic vibrancy of metropolitan regions through better land-use and transportation policy. The project also will provide education and research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students.