Discovering temporal-spatial features of jobs-housing relationship from a regional perspective: A nationwide study

The recent developments in regionalization have redefined the concept of jobs-housing relationship, calling for reexaminations from the regional perspective. This paper studies the temporal and spatial features of jobs-housing relationship and their relations with regional mobility and regional structure in 2258 Quxians (urban districts or rural counties) across China based on 49 months of cellular signaling data. Results show that jobs-housing relationship differ between city types and have seasonal cycles and yearly trends reflecting the rhythm and development of human activity. The temporal variations in jobs-housing relationship are affected by regional mobility, and larger intercity travel volume leads to lower balance level. The spatial variations in jobs-housing relationship are influenced by the form of regional structure, as measured using the Zipf scaling exponent. More polarized regions are less balanced with exceptions in underdeveloped regions. There is an underlying inflection point in jobs-housing relationship that is similar to its long-term average value and reflects regional market equilibrium. This paper contributes to existing literature by providing a big-data driven nationwide jobs-housing study fully aware of the theoretical and practical needs of a regionalizing world. Findings advances our understanding of macroscopic jobs-housing relationship, and offers policy suggestions for governments across the globe.