The Implications of Neighborhood Mobility Networks on Urban Heat Exposure

Noli Brazil, University of California, Davis

Temperatures in US cities are rising at rates never before observed. The burden of higher temperatures and extreme heat is not evenly distributed across neighborhoods within cities. Research has found that racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in exposure are particularly robust across different US contexts, with greater exposure in lower-income and nonwhite neighborhoods. However, exposure is not a spatially bounded process, as residents spend significant time outside of their neighborhoods and travel to neighborhoods both near and far. As such, a more complete portrait of urban heat exposure must consider this higher-order, neighborhood network. Using 2018–2019 mobile phone data from SafeGraph, I construct neighborhood networks based on daily mobility flows for the 100 largest US metropolitan areas. I compare neighborhood heat exposure in the residential neighborhood, the neighborhoods bordering the residential neighborhood, and the non-residential and non-adjacent neighborhoods visited by residents. I then examine sociodemographic inequalities in exposure by comparing differences by neighborhood ethnoracial, socioeconomic disadvantage, age and disability composition.

Keywords: Social network methods, Neighbourhood/contextual effect analysis, Spatial Demography, Population, Environment, and Climate Change

See extended abstract.