More and more people are moving to cities. This much we know. But in our fast paced world, census data is becoming increasingly limited in its ability to tell us exactly where and how people are moving.
Thankfully we now have Facebook.
I just discovered a fascinating study conducted by the Facebook Data Science Team called “Coordinated Migration." What they did was anonymously analyze every Facebook user that has inputted both a hometown and a current city to see where people of a particular hometown are most likely to live, today.
But more specifically, the study is looking at coordinated flows, rather than just total flows to a particular city. A “coordinated migration” is defined as an instance where “a significant proportion of the population of a city has migrated, as a group, to a different city.”
What the study found (perhaps not surprisingly) was that the vast majority of coordinated migrations are happening in countries that are in the midst of rapid urbanization. It’s a case of people moving within the country to its largest city.
Here are the top coordinated migration destinations:
If you’re interested in the nitty gritty of how they actually computed the coordinated migrations, check out the original post by the Facebook Data Science Team.
