Three key vital signs make up the "urban pulse" of a city
Summary
A new PNAS paper defines an 'urban pulse' as a measure of urban metabolic activity across six dimensions (demography, economy, infrastructure, environment, governance, culture). Using remote sensing data from NASA Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2, the study analyzes six cities to identify three vital signs: urbanization is spiky, cyclical and non-periodic, and asynchronous within cities. The authors argue this mosaic pattern indicates resilience by distributing development pressure over time and space.