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

本研究项目将探讨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对社会和经济活力的影响程度。研究人员将开发一种新的衡量SIP的指标，并将使用它来发现SIP在大都市区域内部和之间的变化，确定空间结构如何影响这些测量，并量化归因于SIP的区域内和区域间社会经济结果。SIP度量将使用联合可达性的时间-地理概念来量化社会互动的机会，联合可达性是指两个人在给定一组约束条件下在同一地点和同一时间的容易程度。使用大量的、现成的旅行行为样本数据，该指标将计算美国所有人口超过100万的大都市地区。区域尺度空间结构对社会互动机会的作用在文献中得到了有限的关注，但理解这种关系的复杂性将极大地推进城市区域地理如何在竞争日益激烈的全球化世界中培育活力的基本知识。这项研究需要密集的计算，并将应用大量并行计算资源来增强对城市社会和经济过程的基本知识。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，并将能够检验SIP是否在统计上与社会和经济活力指标相关。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、综合性、互动性和包容性。此外，时间地理学（一种最初用于探索个人层面时空轨迹的方法）将用于研究区域尺度的结果，从而扩展并可能改变时间地理学方法在城市分析中的应用。该项目将提供新的信息、见解和方法，通过更好的土地利用和交通政策来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.