Where diverse populations gather: transit accessibility and the spatial structure of social mixing

Urban venues serve as arenas for social mixing, yet less is known about how public transit infrastructure shapes the geography of mixing at specific locations. This study examines how transit catchment diversity-the socioeconomic heterogeneity of populations reachable by public transit-associates with visitor diversity at points of interest (POIs) in nine Swedish and three US cities. Using mobile phone GPS traces and aggregated foot traffic data from 2024, we compute visitor diversity indices based on visitors' home-neighborhood birth-background composition and employ spatial regression models and geographically weighted regression (GWR). Transit catchment diversity positively predicts visitor diversity across nearly all cities, but this association is robust only in the largest metropolitan areas; in smaller cities, the coefficient attenuates to insignificance once geographic catchment composition, centrality, and venue density are controlled. Spatial spillovers in visitor diversity follow general geographic proximity rather than shared transit-stop connectivity, suggesting that the association operates through catchment population composition rather than station-level linkages. Transit-diversity hotspots occur not in already-diverse venues, but in lower-diversity POIs with lower commercial density, greater distance from transit in US cities, and greater centrality in Sweden. These patterns are consistent with transit-accessible population composition being associated with visitor diversity, particularly where alternative pathways to diverse co-presence are limited.