Vlasov D.N., Tonkikh E.V. What do we know about the citizen: Big Population Data as an urban planning tool. Real Estate: Economics, Management. 2025. No. S3. Pp. 83-87.

Текст статьи/выпуска на сайте журнала URL: https://n-eu.iasv.ru/index.php/neu/issue/view/37/48 (дата обращения 09.01.2026)

Abstract

This article explores the source, resource, and goal of urban development – people – as well as the possibilities for obtaining information about them. The author proposes four key approaches to defining a city dweller, combining demographic, economic, sociological, and interactionist paradigms in spatial terms. The article examines the methodological and procedural aspects of monitoring a city dweller's residence, work commuting, urban lifestyle, and interactions with others using four different data sources: official statistics (censuses and current population counts), big data from mobile operators, big data from Sberanalytics, and microdata from sociological surveys. The article identifies the key positive and negative characteristics of these data sources, relevant for urban development in the context of growing relevance of demographic issues in planning and the need for a "demographic block" in strategic development documents. The main problem with using big population data in urban planning is the lack of justification for the randomness of a person's presence in a given area. The author proposes a division of urban planning demography into "pure" (in which infrastructure construction is determined by absolute quantitative characteristics of the population) and "spatial" (in which the structure of distribution of the population's social composition by territory is the predominant factor in deciding whether to construct a facility). As a recommended framework, the author proposes aggregating various statistical data and developing new models for analyzing and forecasting sociodemographic changes in the nature of intracity settlement, work, interactions with the city and its residents, and the urban lifestyle.