Amenity complexity and urban locations of socio-economic mixing

We studied the intricate dynamics of urban environments, focusing on how the mingling of diverse populations is related to the variety of amenities in neighborhoods. How specific urban features facilitate inclusivity, particularly in spaces where individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds intersect. Drawing on the concept of economic complexity, we set out to quantify the sophistication of amenity sets in various neighborhoods in Budapest, Hungary. We propose that the so-created measure of amenity complexity describes properties of a neighborhood that attract a heterogeneous mix of visitors, as opposed to a simpler measure of the ubiquity or diversity of the amenities. 
 
We do this by analyzing mobility patterns and discerning the socio-economic status of individuals based on the real-estate prices of their residential areas. We investigate the extent of socio-economic mixing in third places visited. We use real estate sales contract information and individual mobile phone-based GPS data to uncover these patterns. We create paths from the raw data of user pings, where we describe their work and home locations, and we extract “third place” activities, where users spend a significant amount of time in an area that is neither their work, nor their home, neither a traffic jam. These third place visits serve as the basis for our analysis to identify neighborhoods where people with varied home locations share their third place stays. We conclude that the amenity complexity measure identifies these neighborhoods well.