Our city is alive!

The relationships among people in a city, along with its infrastructure, form the vibrant essence of urban life. People’s daily activities—commuting, socializing, and engaging in economic exchanges—are facilitated by interconnected systems such as transportation networks, electricity grids, communication technologies, and water distribution. These infrastructures act as both the stage and the enabler for human interactions, forming a complex web of activity that drives a city’s rhythm. My research focuses on studying these interactions and finding how human activity expresses itself in transportation networks and the electricity grid. We have observed that cities exhibit living-like behavior, working as organisms capable of metabolism, growth, resilience, and other properties typical of living entities. In this case, I am displaying the electricity usage in the Chicago region, where we have access to around 4 million smart-meter readings. Residential meters appear in a yellow shade, while commercial ones appear in blue. Can you also see the city beating?