This project looks into Working Hour Patterns in different cities Across the Globe using work-related check-ins and then proceeds with a further investigation into London’s working landscape, based on a combination of social media check-ins, transportation and business data.

  • Foursquare check-ins

    In order to visualize the working activity in different cities of the world, we made use of Foursquare check-ins for an 18th month period between 2012 and 2013. Due to the large amount of data, we kept the check-ins for only a certain number of countries. The final count of check-ins was:

    Brazil: 156759 | US: 131250 | UK: 14821 | Singapore: 6020 | Australia: 4295 | South Africa: 3031

  • Businesses in London

    The business data for London was derived from the Companies House and provided information about active businesses up until 2017. The businesses were organized into 9 categories based on their SIC code:

    • Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing • Mining • Construction • Manufacturing • Transportation & Public Utilities

    • Wholesale Trade - Retail Trade • Finance Insurance, Real Estate • Services

  • Transportation activity in London

    The data transportation for London was derived from TFL and consists of the count of oyster card tap-outs with 15-minute intervals for a random weekday in November 2017. For the purpose of our study, data was aggregated and converted an into hourly format.

24-Hour Working Activities Distribution

Foursquare Global-scale Check-in Dataset: Foursquare Dataset.

London Businesses Choropleth Map

Data source: London Business Data.

Tube station exits in London, 2017

Data source: TFL.

Working Hour Cultures across the Globe



Creators: George Pyne, Qi Liu, Spyridoula Kasimati, Yunong Wang
Map engine: Mapbox GL JS
Github: @working-hour-culture

@2019 CASA, University College London