Experienced political segregation varies with daily travel in us cities
Experienced partisan segregation across patterns of mobility behavior in US cities
Social and Information Networks
Summary
People’s chances of meeting others with different political views are shaped by where they live and where they go each day. The authors show that even if people live in politically similar neighborhoods, their daily travel can expose them to more or less diverse political environments. Those who travel farther tend to encounter a wider range of political views, especially in highly segregated cities. The types of places people visit also affect political mixing, with community spots and social businesses attracting more left-leaning visitors. Overall, political segregation depends not just on residential areas but also on everyday movement patterns.
What this means in practice
- •For urban planners: Design city spaces and transport to encourage more politically diverse daily interactions beyond residential neighborhoods.
- •For location-based service developers: Create features that recommend places to visit based on mobility patterns to increase exposure to diverse political environments.
Authors
Marco Tonin, Michele Tizzoni, Bruno Lepri, Esteban Moro
Abstract
Residential and social sorting along political lines structure Americans' daily interactions, often limiting encounters with opposing viewpoints. Here, we combine high-resolution anonymized mobility data from 11 major U.S. metropolitan areas with precinct-level voting results to quantify and examine individuals' experienced partisan segregation in urban areas. We find that residential context provides a strong baseline for political exposure, but experienced partisan segregation is also shaped by everyday mobility behavior, since individuals living in similar residential environments can experience different levels of partisan segregation depending on their daily routines. In particular, individuals who travel farther encounter more politically diverse environments, especially in highly segregated areas, indicating that mobility range moderates the relationship between residential and experienced segregation, while exploring a wider range of places does not reduce partisan segregation and may even reinforce it. Moreover, place segregation largely reflects political geography, yet categories of points of interest have distinct segregation patterns, with community places and social businesses tending to attract more left-leaning visitors, reflecting visitation patterns rather than local accessibility alone. Our findings show that experienced partisan segregation extends beyond residential geography and is also associated with the mobility behavior and visitation patterns that structure people's daily lives.