Quantifying Urban Divides: Geospatial Data in the Study of Segregation and Integration

Segregation continues to shape cities across the world, producing visible and invisible borders that divide groups, neighborhoods, and everyday lives. These divides are felt in residential clustering, restricted access to green spaces or schools, and the ways people move—or are prevented from moving—through the city. At the same time, shared spaces and intersecting mobilities offer moments of integration, where encounters across difference can occur. Understanding the dynamics of segregation and integration, and how they are inscribed in the built environment and daily mobility systems, is crucial for building more just and inclusive urban futures.

Recent advances in geospatial technologies and data availability have transformed how these divides can be studied. From mobility traces and land use layers to social media footprints and sensor networks, digital datasets now make it possible to measure separation and connection at fine spatial and temporal scales. Yet despite this abundance of data, our knowledge of how infrastructures, urban design, and mobility systems entrench segregation—or foster integration—remains fragmented.

This thematic issue invites contributions that leverage geospatial data to interrogate segregation and integration in contemporary cities. We are particularly interested in studies that reveal how environments such as public amenities, transport systems, or physical barriers reinforce spatial divides, and how everyday mobilities either expose individuals to diversity or deepen isolation. Submissions that combine big data with qualitative or participatory insights are especially encouraged, as they bring the lived experience of segregation and integration into dialogue with geospatial analysis.

By bridging disciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches, this thematic issue seeks to advance research on spatial justice. Its aim is not only to document where divides exist but to understand the mechanisms that sustain them and the conditions that allow them to be crossed.

Authors interested in submitting a paper for this issue are asked to consult the journal's instructions for authors and submit their abstracts (maximum of 250 words, with a tentative title) through the abstracts system (here). When submitting their abstracts, authors are also asked to confirm that they are aware that Urban Planning is an open access journal with a publishing fee if the article is accepted for publication after peer-review (corresponding authors affiliated with our institutional members do not incur this fee).

Readers across the globe will be able to access, share, and download this issue entirely for free. Corresponding authors affiliated with any of our institutional members (over 90 institutions worldwide) publish free of charge. Otherwise, an article processing fee will be charged to the authors to cover editorial costs. We defend that authors should not have to personally pay this fee and encourage them to check with their institutions if funds are available to cover open access publication costs. Further information about the journal's open access charges can be found here.