Abstract:

Against the backdrop of increasing mobility in human society, the approach of geographies of mobility have profoundly influenced various branches of the geography discipline. In this article, we review how geographies of mobility have developed traditional space-time behaviour studies. First, by shifting from a place-based to a people-based perspective, geographies of mobility seek to understand the interaction between indivisible individuals and continuous space-time, thereby addressing the uncertain geographic context problem and neighbourhood effect averaging problem. Second, new methods have been developed for capturing individuals' complex mobilities and dynamic environmental exposures. These range from estimation based on geographical data to real-time measures based on mobile devices as well as subjective measures of environmental exposure and people's perception of geographical contexts. Third, empirically, the geographies of mobility have made methodological contributions to three space-time behaviour research agendas, namely, health geography, social segregation, and urban safety. In short, rising mobility in contemporary urban China poses challenges to traditional methodologies in space-time behaviour studies while also providing opportunities for methodological innovation in this research field. The school of Chinese behavioral geography should keep pace with research on mobility and should keep the geographies of mobility in mind when advancing methodologies and empirical studies.

Key words: geographies of mobility, space-time behaviour studies, uncertain geographic context problem, neighbourhood effect averaging problem, methodological problem