Marta Gonzalez
Talk recording
As cities grow more interconnected, interdependent, and vulnerable to environmental and systemic disruptions, understanding their dynamics through the lens of complex systems becomes essential for achieving sustainability. This talk presents a unified framework that leverages macroscopic patterns, human mobility data, and network-based models to address pressing urban challenges. We begin by examining the dynamics of urban traffic collapse, identifying critical transitions that signal systemic failure in mobility networks. Building on this, we explore how vehicle emissions scale with mobility metrics, showing that reducing vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) through urban densification can significantly curb emissions, even amidst rising congestion. Next, we introduce novel metrics for real-time tracking of urban spatial structure via human mobility data, revealing how cities adapt — or fail to adapt — during shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we extend our systems approach beyond the urban core, applying spatial network models to wildfire management. By identifying high-risk fire spread pathways, we demonstrate how data-driven strategies can enhance proactive responses in climate-vulnerable regions. Collectively, these studies reveal how treating cities as dynamic, interlinked systems allows us to diagnose vulnerabilities, predict critical transitions, and guide interventions for more resilient and sustainable urban futures.
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