AI Insight
This study examines whether elderly residents in three wards of Nagoya, Japan (Naka, Showa, and Moriyama), representing different rent levels, experience equal spatial activity opportunities. Using GPS-based mobility data and a grid-based analytical framework, the researchers found clear inter-group differences across four dimensions: activity space, opportunity context, opportunity exposure, and semantic structure. Residents in the higher-rent central ward (Naka) showed greater concentration in the urban core and higher exposure to retail, service, and food-related opportunities, while lower-rent peripheral ward residents (Moriyama) exhibited more dispersed, transit-dependent mobility patterns.
Why it matters
These findings suggest that residential location and associated rent levels contribute to multi-dimensional inequalities in how older adults access and experience urban opportunities, with direct implications for age-friendly urban planning and transport policy aimed at reducing spatial disadvantage among elderly populations.
arXiv:2605.20280v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Population aging has made the daily mobility of older adults an increasingly important issue for urban planning and transport research. While previous studies have examined elderly mobility in relation to accessibility, active aging, and transport inclusion, less attention has been paid to whether older adults living in different residential contexts experience equal spatial activity opportunities. This study addresses that gap by comparing elderly residents in three wards of Nagoya, namely Naka, Showa, and Moriyama, which represent different rent levels and urban opportunity contexts. Using stay events derived from GPS-based mobility data, we construct a 500 m x 500 m grid-based analytical framework and examine spatial activity opportunity fairness through four dimensions: activity space, opportunity context, opportunity exposure, and semantic structure. The results show clear inter-group differences. Naka residents display the strongest concentration in the urban core, Showa residents occupy an intermediate position, and Moriyama residents exhibit a more dispersed and corridor-oriented pattern. Citywide semantic opportunities are unevenly distributed and concentrated around the urban core. Event-level exposure also shows a clear gradient, with Naka residents encountering the highest opportunity density, followed by Showa and Moriyama. Category-specific analysis further reveals that Naka residents are more strongly embedded in Retail/Service and Food/Drink opportunity structures, whereas Showa and Moriyama show relatively stronger Transit-related components. These findings suggest that spatial activity opportunity inequality among elderly residents is not one-dimensional, but multi-dimensional and category-specific. The paper contributes an event-based perspective for examining experienced urban opportunity inequality under differentiated residential contexts.