Urban life is shaped by both connection and division. Beneath the visible flows of people lie invisible structures that determine who interacts, how crises spread, and how cities recover. In this talk, we present a framework for understanding inequality and resilience in urban social dynamics. We begin by uncovering the “invisible walls” that separate people’s urban experiences—micro-level segregation patterns revealed through large language models analyzing social narratives. We then show that the structural position of places within mobility networks governs their capacity to sustain diversity during shocks, providing a quantitative view of social resilience. Building on these insights, we extend the framework to policy design, developing a mobility-and-demography-aware epidemic model that demonstrates how fair and efficient interventions can emerge from the same underlying urban connectivity. Together, our studies reveal a dynamic chain linking inequality, resilience, and intervention: hidden barriers fragment social life, network structures mediate recovery, and informed strategies can restore equity, pointing toward a new vision for understanding and shaping human–AI hybrid urban futures.