Rhythms of a Week: 7-Day Patterns in Black-White Segregation in 49 Metropolitan Areas

While residential segregation is a persistent attribute of metropolitan areas, recent studies find segregation levels fluctuate throughout the day, reaching their lowest levels during daytime hours. This paper shows hourly variations in Black-White segregation from Monday through Sunday for the top 49 most populated metropolitan areas with Global Positioning System (GPS) data collected from mobile phones from October 2018. I find that segregation levels are higher on average over weekends compared to that of weekdays. I use models to identify which features of neighborhoods can be attributed for higher levels of segregation on weekends, which include all demographic variables and nearly a third of 35 sectors of businesses and organizations, such as retail, personal care, and religious organizations. I also find more than a third of the sectors are associated with higher levels of segregation during business hours on weekdays, including academic institutions, health care, manufacturing, and financial institutions. Findings from this paper display the significance in the distinction between weekdays and weekends with where people spend their time and how this relates to racial segregation. Implications of temporal heterogeneity in the relationship organizations have with their immediate surroundings are also discussed.