Jose Lobo

About

Jose Lobo is a Clinical Associate Professor at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University, where he has been a faculty member since 2005. His research interests include metropolitan economic performance, location-specific economic growth, innovation, socioeconomics, spatial analysis, data mining, machine learning, urban systems, social networks, regions of innovation, and sustainable cities and communities. He is involved in studying the determinants of urban economic performance, the causes and consequences of urban size and scale, and how characteristics of individuals, organizations, institutions, and social networks interact to create regions of innovation. Professor Lobo has acted as a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute and Italy's Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia. He is currently on the faculty steering committee for Arizona State University's Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity and serves as an associate research professor in the School of Sustainability. His educational background includes a Ph.D. in Regional Science from Cornell University, earned in 1996, along with a master's degree in Regional Science and a bachelor's degree in Physics from Cornell. His work encompasses forecasting technological progress in solar energy, studying the dynamics of slums in global urban areas, and developing real-time metrics on the effects of investments on technological invention, among other projects.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Economic geography
• Economics
• Engineering
• Geography
• Political Science
• Regional science
• Archaeology
• Civil engineering
• Demography

Selected publications

• The interpretation of urban scaling analysis in time

  Journal of The Royal Society Interface · 2020 · 112 citations

  Scaling is a general analytical framework used by many disciplines-from physics to biology and the social sciences-to characterize how population-averaged properties of a collective vary with its size. The observation of scale invariance over some range identifies general system types, be they ideal gases, ecosystems or cities. The use of scaling in the analysis of cities quantifies many of their arguably fundamental general characteristics, especially their capacity to create interrelated econo…

  DOI

• Cities: Complexity, theory and history

  PLoS ONE · 2020 · 97 citations

  In recent decades researchers in a variety of disciplines have developed a new "urban science," the central goal of which is to build general theory regarding the social processes underlying urbanization. Much work in urban science is animated by the notion that cities are complex systems. What does it mean to make this claim? Here we adopt the view that complex systems entail both variation and structure, and that their properties vary with system size and with respect to where and how they are…

  DOI

• Urban Science: Integrated Theory from the First Cities to Sustainable Metropolises

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 54 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• The Low-Density Urban Systems of the Classic Period Maya and Izapa: Insights from Settlement Scaling Theory

  Latin American Antiquity · 2020 · 42 citations

  The peoples of southern Mesoamerica, including the Classic period Maya, are often claimed to exhibit a distinct type of spatial organization relative to contemporary urban systems. Here, we use the settlement scaling framework and properties of settlements recorded in systematic, full-coverage surveys to examine ways in which southern Mesoamerican settlement systems were both similar to and different from contemporary systems. We find that the population-area relationship in these settlements di…

  DOI

• Fueling a net-zero future: The influence of government-funded research on climate change mitigation inventions

  Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions · 2024-04-06 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  This study examines the pace and content of Climate Change Mitigation Technology (CCMT) inventions, focusing on the influence of government-funded research on patent characteristics. Utilizing data from the USPTO, we analyze the trends in CCMT patenting from 1988 to 2017 and reveal a significant increase in CCMT inventions. However, patents in hydrogen technology and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) are comparatively low, suggesting these fields are still in the early development stages. CCMT in…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: RAPID: Developing Real Time Metrics on the Effects of ARRA Investments on Technological Invention

  NSF · $68k · 2009–2010

Frequent coauthors

• Luís M. A. Bettencourt

  University of Chicago

  51 shared

• Deborah Strumsky

  Jönköping University

  38 shared

• Scott G. Ortman

  University of Colorado Boulder

  34 shared

• Charlotta Mellander

  University of Chicago

  20 shared

• Michael E. Smith

  20 shared

• Hyejin Youn

  15 shared

• Shade T. Shutters

  Global Climate Forum

  14 shared

• Geoffrey B. West

  14 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Regional Science

  Cornell University

  1996

• M.S., Regional Science

  Cornell University

  1992

• B.S., Physics

  Cornell University

  1984

Awards & honors

• NSF-SES Center for Nanotechnology at ASU (2010 - 2016)
• Collaborative Research: RAPID: Developing Real Time Metrics…
• University as Entrepreneur. KAUFFMAN FDN (2007 - 2012)
• Forecasting and influencing technological progress in solar…
• Studying the Dynamics of Slums in Global Urban Areas at Sant…

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• Diane Patakih-68
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