City dynamics through Twitter: Relationships between land use and spatiotemporal demographics

Social network data offer interesting opportunities in urban studies. In this study, we used Twitter data to analyse city dynamics over the course of the day. Users of this social network were grouped according to city zone and time slot in order to analyse the daily dynamics of the city and the rel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cities 2018-02, Vol.72, p.310-319
Main Authors: García-Palomares, Juan Carlos, Salas-Olmedo, María Henar, Moya-Gómez, Borja, Condeço-Melhorado, Ana, Gutiérrez, Javier
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cities
Computer networks
Demographics
Health education
Land use
Parks & recreation areas
Profiles
Regression analysis
Social media
Social networks
Spatiotemporal demographics
Time use
Transportation
Twitter
Urban geography
Urban studies
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Summary:Social network data offer interesting opportunities in urban studies. In this study, we used Twitter data to analyse city dynamics over the course of the day. Users of this social network were grouped according to city zone and time slot in order to analyse the daily dynamics of the city and the relationship between this and land use. First, daytime activity in each zone was compared with activity at night in order to determine which zones showed increased activity in each of the time slots. Then, typical Twitter activity profiles were obtained based on the predominant land use in each zone, indicating how land uses linked to activities were activated during the day, but at different rates depending on the type of land use. Lastly, a multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the influence of the different land uses on each of the major time slots (morning, afternoon, evening and night) through their changing coefficients. Activity tended to decrease throughout the day for most land uses (e.g. offices, education, health and transport), but remained constant in parks and increased in retail and residential zones. Our results show that social network data can be used to improve our understanding of the link between land use and urban dynamics. •We use Twitter data to uncover the link between land use and urban dynamics.•Twitter activity profiles were obtained based on the type of land use.•Using OLS we determine the influence of land uses on Twitter temporal activity.•The unit of analysis is the Twitter user rather than the geotagged tweet.
ISSN:0264-2751
1873-6084
DOI:10.1016/j.cities.2017.09.007