After Hours: Studying Nightlife Mobility Patterns

This project studies nightlife mobility patterns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and develops a web application for visualizing nightlife activity and predicting future nightlife traffic to commercial corridors. This document provides an overview of our process and key takeaways from our analysis.

While nighttime activity is an important component to Philadelphia’s economy, culture, and identity, there is limited empirical data available to help decision makers govern the nighttime economy. As a result, many of the logistical and policy decisions are largely based on emotional perceptions of the negative externalities of the nighttime economy, such as noise pollution and safety concerns. This project uses the novel SafeGraph dataset to analyze nighttime mobility patterns in Philadelphia and develop a model to predict nighttime trips to commercial corridors. Our model utilizes a variety of factors including retail mix, built environment features, and demographic data. Our findings indicate that changing the corridor retail mix impacts traffic during evening hours. Additionally, our research provides new quantitative insights into the behavior of visitors during nighttime hours in Philadelphia which has important implications for economic development in the city, particularly in the post COVID-19 climate.

Learn more about this project.