Studying the Micro-Foundations of Urban Interactions with Large Scale Data

Urban Scaling theories are fundamentally built on the assumption that cities facilitate social and economic interactions across various modes and specifically assume that interactions happen as people move around cities' infrastructure networks. While these models have been wildly successful in predicting economic outputs, innovation, crime, disease spread, and mental health, the exact dynamics of these interactions remain unclear. Many urban interactions occur in businesses, places of employment, and social settings (bars, gyms, coffee shops) and not on the street. In addition, people in large cities necessarily face interaction budgets which they have to contend with. How do people spend this budget on close versus week ties?
 
In this working group, researchers from academia and the DOE national laboratories will develop strategies for how to build new insights arising from the historic mathematical and theoretical strengths housed at SFI and the computational and data resources arising from the national laboratories.