The limits of mathematical models of cities - an example from the Mediterranean region

In this article we explain the metaphor of living in living cities. Urban problems such as traffic congestion can be considered and possibly solved involving living technology. We also introduce the notion of urban scaling - the idea that certain properties of all cities change, on average, with their size in predictable scale-invariant way. We question this hypothesis by measuring some traffic-dependent quantities for several urban scales. Specifically, we investigate the limits of traffic capacity as a feature of questioning simplifications of mathematical model of cities.