Friendship via a bus ride: urban mobility and social life in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan

In social networks research, geographical distance between places of residence partially explains patterns of friendship ties in semi-isolated communities like classrooms or schools. For example, individuals that live close to one another are more likely to be friends than chance alone predicts. Explaining this pattern, researchers often argue that distance approximates meeting opportunities: when individuals live nearby, they are more likely to meet, both by chance and deliberately. This paper discusses the effect of distance in post-Soviet urban space and argues that, at least in this context, shared access to public transit explains the structure of social relationships better than geographical distance. I model the pattern of friendship ties among a cohort of 145 high-school students considering the distances between residential locations and the available public transit. Results suggest that students that live along the same bus routes are more likely to be friends than those who just live close to one another. I conclude with the discussion on how research in the post-Soviet region can enrich the discussion on the association between the social and spatial.