Assessing the livability within the 15-minute city concept based on mobile phone data

Tianqi Wang; Teemu Jama; Henrikki Tenkanen

Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2601.14307

Assessing the livability within the 15-minute city concept based on mobile phone data

Tianqi Wang·Teemu Jama·Henrikki Tenkanen

View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Many cities promote walkability through concepts such as the compact city and 15-minute city to enhance urban livability, yet few methods link spatial walkability features to empirically measured livability and account for temporal dynamics. The method developed for this study uses mobile phone data from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Finland) to assess whether commonly used, literature-derived livability indicators (diversity, density, proximity, accessibility) predict observed human activity patterns across different times of day. We constructed two key dimensions of livability: attractiveness and walkability with quantifiable sub-indicators that were selected based on literature. Our analysis shows that walkability, and even more so the combined livability index, correlates with activity patterns, outperforming the pure attractiveness perspective. However, this relationship is temporally unstable, significantly weakening at night and fluctuating daily. Moreover, based on Geographically Weighted Regression analysis, our results reveal significant spatial variation in the relationship between livability and the intensity of human activities. The findings suggest that traditional urban planning goals, such as functional diversity to enhance walkability, contribute to livability but have a limited impact on the 15-minute city's overall sustainable mobility objectives, necessitating a larger-scale perspective and more functionally profiled approaches for urban development.

Explore related subjects

physics.soc-ph cs.CY

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeX RIS

Tianqi Wang, Teemu Jama, Henrikki Tenkanen. 2026-01-18. Assessing the livability within the 15-minute city concept based on mobile phone data. https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14307

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Energy pathway variety and the progress of the energy transition in European countries

The integration of new energy forms into existing energy infrastructure has emerged as a critical challenge in the context of the pursuit of a sustainable energy transition. One of the main challenges is understanding how this integration takes place not only from the introduction, but also as energy follows existing paths or creates new ones through which it is transformed and used by different activities. Here we introduce techniques from network science to analyse this process for the case of 29 European countries between 1992 and 2021. We study how new energy forms increase or decrease the variety (heterogeneity) of paths through the system of each country by establishing new ones and replacing or phasing out existing ones. We find that the transition to systems based on renewable energy is characterised by an initial increase in the variety of paths while the heterogeneity of paths decreases at the end of the transition, when the proportion of non-renewables in the system tends to zero. We then demonstrate that greater heterogeneity (complexity) is associated with larger annual fluctuations in the proportion of non-renewable sources in the system, establishing a direct relationship between the progress of the transition and the complexity of the energy system in which it occurs. This contributes to the understanding of general properties of the dynamics of the energy transition and effects that accelerate or deter it.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2026

Fundamental limits to identifying node and tie memory in temporal networks: marginal artefacts and spreading dynamics

Temporal-network models attribute memory in contact data to either node self-excitation (branching ratio n_node) or tie reinforcement (kappa), carrying major consequences for epidemic spreading. We prove that when event initiators are observed, the two mechanisms are orthogonal: the Fisher information is block-diagonal and neither trades off against the other. In undirected proximity data, where initiators are unobserved, marginalising over them couples the mechanisms into a structural confound that survives posterior smoothing. On empirical proximity, messaging, and email records, however, a cruder failure dominates: fitted node memory is pinned to the inter-event marginal law and remains virtually invariant across latent label posterior samples (coefficient of variation below 1%). An inter-event-order shuffle test and burstiness-memory diagnostics reveal that exponential-Hawkes node memory is recovered from none, while tie reinforcement remains identifiable throughout. This near-unidentifiability is intrinsic, not an artefact of the exponential kernel: refitting flexible scale-free (sum-of-exponentials) kernels on synthetic power-law self-exciting processes fails to distinguish genuine node memory from memoryless renewal controls, with identical collapses recurring on algorithmic networks (edit bots, cloud microservices) and cortical spiking. Downstream epidemic consequences are quantitative: simulations fitted to empirical contact records under-predict outbreak sizes by up to a factor of 2.5 and shift the epidemic threshold. We conclude that observational temporal networks face a two-fold identifiability boundary: contact directionality is essential to decouple tie reinforcement, whereas heavy-tailed node self-excitation is intrinsically unidentifiable from contact timings alone.

physics.soc-ph↗

arXiv2026

Assessing extreme flood impacts on urban rail transit: A passenger-oriented, resilience-informed framework

Urban rail transit systems (URTSs) are increasingly exposed to extreme floods following heavy precipitation, yet passenger travel impacts are often assessed through delay-based indicators that overlook infeasible journeys under large-scale disruptions. This study develops a passenger-oriented, resilience-informed framework for assessing flood impacts on URTS journeys from disruption onset to recovery completion. The framework presents a novel six-category classification of journey impacts, explicitly considering rerouting, alternative station use, and a delay threshold. It is demonstrated through hourly dynamic simulations of 15 London URTS lines under 30-year, 100-year, and 1,000-year flood risk scenarios. Results indicate that severe flood disruptions lead to substantial unsatisfied demand, driven primarily by unavailable routes rather than unacceptable delays. Compared with finer behaviour adjustments, rerouting dominates travel impacts. These findings highlight the significance of moving beyond delay-based assessment and provide valuable evidence on essential behavioural mechanisms for strategic-level stress testing intended to inform URTS flood resilience intervention planning.

physics.soc-ph↗