Understanding geographical patterns of a city’s diurnal rhythm from aggregate data of location‐aware services

Do collective behaviors of the daily routine of a city's inhabitants form the periodical cycling of human activity at the city level (here termed the “city's diurnal rhythm”)? If the answer is yes, do there exist geographical patterns in the city's diurnal rhythm? Using a nationwide dataset of observed uses of location‐aware services in the largest Chinese social media platform, we first confirm the significant periodicity in city‐level human activity from the perspective of the aggregate degree of social media uses over a day. We then investigate geographical changes in the diurnal rhythm of human activity and its local variations in different parts of the city, and between weekdays and weekend days, over 340 Chinese cities. Our results show that a city's diurnal rhythm across the whole country exhibits both regular, nationally conspicuous shifts along geographical gradients and locally distinct spatiotemporal changes within the city. Our findings could provide insights into the characterization of the daily routine of city‐level human activity and its geographical patterns, and have potential for several issues in terms of planning, management, and decision‐making related to human population dynamics.