Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 14 December 2022 – Room 0.423
You are invited to join the weekly Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 14 December 2022, from 13.15 to 14.45 pm. The seminar will be held in room LG 0.423. Maximilian von Ehrlich (University of Bern) will be talking about „The Fragility of Urban Social Networks ˗ Mobility as a City Glue“.
More information can be found here:
Social interactions are crucial to a city’s cohesion, and the high frequency of interaction reflects many benefits of density. However, adverse environmental conditions, such as pollution or pandemics, may critically affect these interactions as they shift preferences over meeting locations and partners. Some interactions may be shifted to the virtual space, while other non-planned interactions may disappear. We analyze spatial interaction networks in Singapore covering about half of the adult population at a fine-grained spatial resolution to understand the importance of population mixing and places’ amenities for urban network resilience. We document that environmental shocks negatively affect total interactions. Still, conditional on meeting physically, the number and type of location options may crucially impact the intensity and type of social interactions. The interplay between preferences for meetings partners, locations, and mobility determines population mixing and the fragility of urban social networks.