RT Journal Article
T1 Effect of COVID-19 response policies on walking behavior in US cities
A1 Hunter, Ruth F.
A1 Garcia, Leandro
A1 Thiago Herick, de Sa
A1 Zapata-Diomedi, Belén
A1 Millett, Christopher
A1 Woodcock, James
A1 Pentland, Alex 'Sandy'
A1 Moro, Esteban
AB The COVID-19 pandemic is causing mass disruption to our daily lives. We integrate mobility data from mobile devices and area-level data to study the walking patterns of 1.62 million anonymous users in 10 metropolitan areas in the United States. The data covers the period from mid-February 2020 (pre-lockdown) to late June 2020 (easing of lockdown restrictions). We detect when users were walking, distance walked and time of the walk, and classify each walk as recreational or utilitarian. Our results reveal dramatic declines in walking, particularly utilitarian walking, while recreational walking has recovered and even surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Our findings also demonstrate important social patterns, widening existing inequalities in walking behavior. COVID-19 response measures have a larger impact on walking behavior for those from low-income areas and high use of public transportation. Provision of equal opportunities to support walking is key to opening up our society and economy.
PB Springer Science and Business Media LLC
SN 2041-1723
YR 2021
FD 2021-06-16
LK https://hdl.handle.net/10016/34667
UL https://hdl.handle.net/10016/34667
LA eng
NO We would like to thank Cuebiq for allowing the use of anonymized data through their COVID19 Collaborative program. E.M. acknowledges partial support by MINECO (FIS2016-78904-C3-3-P and PID2019-106811GB-C32). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
DS e-Archivo
RD 16 sept. 2024