Reimagining Urban Science for Global Sustainability: Five Strategic Research Areas

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 changesTo 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 towards urban transformations. Interconnections across, and enabling conditions to advance, these priority research themes are discussed.