Millions of People's Location Data Revealed a 'Universal' Pattern In Study

More than half of people on Earth live in and around cities, and the population drift from rural to urban spaces is projected to increase in the coming decades. As cities continue to grow, it will become even more important to understand the complex social interactions occurring inside them, which influence everything from productivity to the spread of infectious diseases.

This need for new perspectives on urban bustle inspired researchers, led by MIT’s Senseable City Laboratory, to tap into data collected from millions of anonymized mobile phone users with the aim of filling a key gap in models of human movement in cities. 

The results reveal what the researchers describe as a new “universal visitation law of human mobility” that “opens up unprecedented possibilities” to predict flows between locations and that can be applied to cities as diverse as Boston, Singapore, and Dakar, according to a study published on Wednesday in Nature. 

The new research is “the result of years of research” at MIT, in collaboration with physicist Geoffrey West at the Santa Fe Institute, according to a joint email to VICE from study authors Carlo Ratti, director of Senseable City Lab (SCL); Paolo Santi, who leads the lab’s MIT/Fraunhofer Ambient Mobility initiative; and Lei Dong, a postdoctoral associate at SCL. 

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