Comparing Measures of Urban Land Use Mix

We review a variety of common measures of urban land use mix in order to understand their differences and to identify their strengths and limitations. We then apply these measures to data from a Monte Carlo simulation to ascertain statistical relationships among them, finding that they can be placed into four groups where measures within each group produce highly consistent results: Percentage and Exposure Index; all varieties of the Atkinson Index; Balance, Entropy, and Herfindahl–Hirschman indices; and the Dissimilarity and Gini indices. We find that when analyzing two dimensions of land use, generally both the Balance Index and the Dissimilarity Index should be used, and that the Dissimilarity Index should be tested at multiple scales. We provide a number of other practical recommendations about which mixed use measure to apply given the contextual information available to a researcher or analyst.