Sensing The Urban: Using location-based social network data in urban analysis

Location-based services (LBS) are generating vast bodies of data relating to the whereabouts of their users. This is due to the ease with which modern mobile phones can communicate their precise location via the global positioning system (GPS). Online social networks have begun using LBS to aid social encounter and place discovery in cities. A spatial analysis of the aggregate activity generated by such networks can show us how social activity in a city is distributed, revealing fine-grained spatial patterns evident in the social life of cities. The nature of this new data is discussed in relation to existing urban data sets. Large-scale data from one such network is analysed across three cities in order to produce an inter-urban analysis. Comparative measures of polycentricity and fragmentation are used to discuss the spatial structure of the three cities in question. Finally, the impact of LBS technologies are discussed in the context of urban analysis.