Abstract
Non-technical summary Cities, as complex systems, are faced with increasingly diverse and connected challenges across social, economic, environmental, and health domains. To help cities address these challenges, the Future Earth Urban Knowledge-Action Network developed a cross-disciplinary urban research agenda through expert elicitations and extensive consultation. Five research themes to guide urban sustainability research were identified including: (1) advancing urban sustainability transformations, (2) ensuring equity, (3) boosting innovation in low to lower-middle income countries, (4) managing complexity and systemic risks, and (5) navigating environmental change. Advancing this agenda will require collaboration across disciplines and geographies, transdisciplinary coproduction, and enhanced support to urban science. Technical Abstract Cities and urban regions are at the forefront of transformations toward global sustainability. As urbanization accelerates, there is increasing demand for cities to play multiple, complex and synthetic roles across social and environmental domains within and beyond their boundaries, for example driving economic development while mitigating and adapting to global environmental changes. To help cities in meeting this challenge, urban science, a rapidly growing field that includes inter- and transdisciplinary research, needs to expand and evolve, with clear priorities. Combining expert elicitation and community consultation, the Future Earth Urban Knowledge-Action Network developed a strategic research agenda for urban science for the next decade. The urban science research agenda describes five critical research themes for scientific advances: (1) accelerate urban sustainability transformations, (2) ensure equity and inclusivity, (3) amplify innovation from the low to lower-middle income countries, (4) negotiate complexity and systemic risks, and (5) navigate environmental change. Under each research theme, we review the state of the art, identify remaining gaps, and outline key research questions needing to be addressed to advance science toward urban transformations. Interconnections across, and enabling conditions to advance, these priority research themes are discussed. Social media summary Globally co-designed urban research agenda reveals pressing priorities for sustainability and resilience.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e38 |
| Number of pages | 50 |
| Journal | Global Sustainability |
| Volume | 8 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 18 Sept 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s), 2025.
Funding
The authors would like to acknowledge the Future Earth Urban Knowledge-Action Network for the space it provided to discuss the development of this manuscript and Future Earth Australia for hosting the experts for the development of the initial ideas despite the forest fire that required us to relocate the workshop on the day of arrival. The Future Earth Global Secretariat Hub Japan and the Institute for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo are acknowledged for the organization of the workshop and continued support along the development of this manuscript. Finally, we are grateful to all those that contributed to the survey which helped to enlarge the knowledge-base and diversity of the manuscript. The workshop that led to the development of this manuscript was funded by the Institute for Future Initiatives, The University of Tokyo. GS is supported by the collaborative project under the universitycorporate collaboration agreement between Kubota Corporation and The University of Tokyo.
| Funders |
|---|
| Future Earth Urban Knowledge-Action Network |
| University of Tokyo |
| Kubota Corporation |
