Reside nearby, behave apart? Activity-space-based segregation among residents of various types of housing in Beijing, China

Abstract

Given the ongoing “mobility turn” in social science research, a more comprehensive understanding of segregation is needed. Activity-space-based segregation studies have aroused renewed interests in geography and urban planning research. Most of the existing studies utilized the differences in spatial characteristics of people's actual activity space to identify the segregation among social groups. However, few studies have examined activity-space-based segregation in terms of individuals' potential activity space and the temporal variations in their segregation experiences. This paper aims to help fill these two research gaps by implementing an empirical study in Beijing. We examine the activity-space-based segregation of the residents of different types of housing in a Beijing suburb in terms of both actual activity space and potential activity space. We further investigate the temporal variations of the residents' segregation experiences during a week. A 7-day individual GPS tracking dataset, combined with the activity diary data and the socioeconomic attributes data of 422 participants is used for the study. The major finding is that residents of different types of housing in Beijing do experience activity-space-based segregation, while the characteristics of segregation vary with respect to actual activity space and potential activity space. Also, participants' segregation experiences varies between different days of the week. This paper offers some empirical evidence on enriching the understanding of activity-space-based segregation research as well as improving the understanding about social segregation among the residents of different types of housing in Chinese cities. It also generates some nuanced knowledge for future policy recommendations in a broad context.