5. Implications for Urban and Mobility Policy

This chapter illustrates the potentiality of mobile phone traffic data for improving the effectiveness of urban policies. Mobile phone traffic data, as the effect of individual behaviour and habits, help in formulating policies more in keeping with the molecular daily practices and emerging demands being made by diverse populations using the city and its services, at varying rhythms and intensities. By offering new maps of site practices and information on temporary populations, the processing of mobile phone data has an important role to play in both the analytical and the normative dimensions of urban policies, within two different perspectives. The first regards the opportunity to use a real-time knowledge of mobility needs, possible through a more widespread use of networked technologies, as a framework for area-wide implementation of innovative urban policy and transport supply. The second perspective concerns the valuable support offered by mobile phone data in “re-scaling” urban policy and assisting in the construction of geographies of partnerships between different stakeholders.