Mobile Communication May Change Importance of Certain Locations in Cities

In the traditional mode of thinking, the locations people choose for their daily activities (e.g., for meeting friends) are determined by the need to minimize travel time or cost between locations. Analysis of how people interact over space therefore looks at fixed locations (e.g., restaurants) in urban areas and how people travel between them.

The increased use of ICTs renders this conception inadequate. “Urban travel can no longer be understood simply as the spatial interaction between two fixed locations,” says Mei-Po Kwan of The Ohio State University, author of the study. “It now involves more complex space-time coordination enabled by mobile communications.” This trend can lead to changes in the importance and function of certain areas in a city.

Kwan suggests a new conceptualization of urban travel, using hypertext as a metaphor. “In a hypertext model, each individual has several nodes (as hypertext in a document) that connect to different social networks (e.g., to different groups of friends, colleagues, or relatives). Each link in these networks represents the possibility of interactive coordination between two individuals, who are also connected to many other individuals through various sets of real-time communication links,” says Kwan.

This metaphor provides a useful conceptual foundation for dealing with an increasingly complicated area of research. The widespread adoption of mobile communications and other ICTs has significantly altered the ways in which people interact, increasing the spatial and temporal flexibility of daily activities.-Blackwell Publishing Ltd.