Hierarchical organization of pedestrian mobility persists across cities

Abstract Walking is the most universal form of human mobility, yet it remains unclear whether pedestrian movement reflects local urban conditions or more general principles of collective human behaviour. Because pedestrian flows are rarely observed comprehensively across cities, the large-scale organization of walking remains poorly understood. Here, we infer pedestrian movement across multiple cities and examine whether walking flows exhibit consistent structural organization despite differences in urban form and network topology. Using transferable mobility models validated against observed pedestrian counts in Sydney and New York City, we find that pedestrian flows exhibit a stable hierarchical organization across cities. In all cases, a small fraction of locations accounts for a disproportionate share of total movement, and this concentration substantially exceeds expectations from topology-preserving null models. Walking flows are further organized around a dense core of high-flow locations, with most movement occurring within this core. While urban networks differ substantially in structure and flow intensity, the hierarchical organization of walking remains remarkably consistent across cities. These findings suggest that collective human walking follows transferable structural regularities that emerge from the interaction between behavioural tendencies and spatial constraints, providing insight into the organization of pedestrian mobility in support of more accessible and sustainable urban transport systems.