  Understanding the interplay between egocentric preference and urban structure
in shaping human mobility has profound implications for improving epidemic
intervention, social equity, and urban resilience. However, numerous existing
studies either solely identify the egocentric preferences -- the anchoring
effects from home -- or the impact of hierarchical urban structures. Here, we
propose a network-based approach to present human mobility in both spatial and
topological aspects within the urban system, using cell phone trajectory data
from millions of users across three countries. By segmenting mobility
trajectories into modules and examining their overlap with urban scales, we
have observed the inflation law that the geospatial extent of these modules
increases sub-linearly with their distance from home. Moreover, the egocentric
preference for higher urban levels leads to this increase. This universal
finding indicates that home-based preferences distort the hierarchical scales
of human mobility in the urban environment, regardless of demographics or
geography.
