Exploring collective activity space and its spatial heterogeneity using mobile phone signaling Data: A case of Shenzhen, China

•Propose a three-step workflow of applying mobile phone signaling data to measure the collective activity space based on residential locations.•Offer four-dimensional indices to depict collective activity space for supporting planning practice.•One-week temporal unit can be used as the least period to capture collective activity space.•Reveal the characteristics of the collective activity space in Shenzhen, China. The planning ethos of providing proximity-based services to all inhabitants has been prevailing recently, and underlines the importance of knowing areal differences in collective activity space (AS) of populations. Mobile phone signaling data (MSD) has great potentials for this end, especially in mega-cities with fast changing and spatially varying demographic composition. However, two problems need to be addressed when applying MSD-based AS measurement for planning practices, including the identification of regularly visited locations and the selection of measure indices. This paper proposes a three-step workflow to apply the MSD to measure local collective AS with considering addressing the problems. This three-step workflow aims to illustrate the procedure of using MSD to measure collective AS for supporting planning practice in urban China, with clarifying some key concerns when doing so. We apply the workflow to examine the spatial heterogeneity of the collective AS in Shenzhen City and discuss the transferability of the workflow in different social and institutional contexts.