Populating Nature Cities

The advantage of living in cities compared with rural areas with respect to height and BMI in children and adolescents has generally become smaller globally from 1990 to 2020, except in sub-Saharan Africa.

City-level analysis of data from the SALURBAL project shows vast heterogeneity in life expectancy across cities within the same country, in addition to substantive differences in causes of death among nine Latin American countries, revealing modifiable factors that could be leveraged by municipal-level policies aimed toward improving health in urban environments.

Latin America is the world’s most urbanized region and its heterogeneous urban development may impact chronic diseases. In this study, the authors evaluate the association of built environment characteristics with body mass index, obesity, and type 2 diabetes.

Socioeconomic segregation is one of the main factors behind large-scale inequalities in urban areas and its characterisation remains challenging. The authors propose a family of non-parametric measures to quantify spatial heterogeneity through diffusion, and show how this relates to segregation and deprivation

Two remarkably large sites in southwest Amazonia, belonging to the Casarabe culture, include complex civic-ceremonial architecture and large water-management infrastructure, representing a type of tropical low-density urbanism that has not previously been described in Amazonia.

Rotaru et al. introduce a transparent crime forecasting algorithm that reveals inequities in police enforcement and suggests an enforcement bias in eight US cities.

Maarten van Ham et al. track changes in the social geography of New York City, London and Tokyo. They find that the workforces are professionalizing. High income earners are concentrating in the city centres, whereas poverty is suburbanizing.

The relationship between new greenspaces and gentrification is an important one for urbanization. Here the authors show a positive relationship for at least one decade between greening in the 1990s–2000s and gentrification that occurred between 2000–2016 in 17 of 28 studied cities in North America and Europe.

Climate justice is rising: large cities in the U.S. are increasingly integrating justice into their climate mitigation plans and pioneer cities are developing tools to operationalize just climate policies on the ground.

Superblocks have captivated the sustainability community since they were pioneered in Barcelona, but research has been limited. This study looks at the potential for superblocks and miniblocks across various urban centres and types

Age-friendly cities initiatives aim to facilitate active and healthy aging. Focusing on the urban physical environment, the authors argue that longevity-ready cities that aim for better health and well-being for people of all ages from a life-course perspective can accomplish more than initiatives focused solely on old age.

Through an analysis of global differences in human exposure to greenspace, a new study identifies a contrasting pattern of greenspace exposure between Global South and North cities and finds seasonal variations in greenspace exposure inequality.

The shift to data-driven urban climate governance alters accountability. This Review examines critically the drivers of the shift—standardization, transparency and capacity building—and how best to achieve equitable climate mitigation outcomes within this context.

Historical appraisals of US neighbourhoods are thought to have led to present-day disparities in homeownership, home values and environmental and health outcomes. Cushing et al. examine the links between this historic red-lining, the siting of fossil fuel power plants and the burden of emissions.

The authors use large-scale data on urban productivity, innovation and social connectivity, as well as extensive mathematical modelling, and show that power-law urban scaling laws arise out of urban inequalities.

Urban development has dramatically increased in recent decades. Analyzing 841 large cities throughout the world for the period from 2001 to 2018, the authors disclosed uneven features of global urbanization in terms of urban expansion, population growth, and greening at different economic levels.

An analysis of GPS pedestrian traces shows that (1) people increasingly deviate from the shortest path when the distance between origin and destination increases and that (2) chosen paths are statistically different when origin and destination are swapped. Ultimately, this can explain the observed human attitude in selecting different paths upon return trips.

A large, slow-moving landslide underlying the city of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has accelerated in recent decades due to hydrological modifications related to urbanization, according to an analysis of aerial photographs and remote-sensing data.

Ecosystems that provide fresh water for cities also impact sediment flows, flood mitigation and hydropower provision. This Article looks at over 300 cities globally to gauge the interactions of natural ecosystems with built infrastructure.

The future challenges and potential opportunities of robotics and autonomous systems in urban ecosystems, and how they may impact biodiversity, are explored and prioritized via a global horizon scan of 170 experts.

One of the most effective ways to keep people cool is often neglected in urban planning. Cities must work to provide cover and reverse the ‘shade deserts’ common in low-income communities.

Coastal cities face a compound threat from relative sea-level rise and land subsidence; however, local land subsidence rates are spatially variable and can be difficult to quantify. Remote interferometric radar observations allow high-resolution estimations of local land subsidence to better inform the future of major coastal cities.

The socio-political factors influencing societal responses to drought are often overlooked in risk assessments. Here, a social-environmental scenario that bridges natural and social sciences is used to analyse responses of a Southern African city to unprecedented drought.

China has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 but policies favouring urbanization could slow down progress. This study tests the hypothesis that urbanization and carbon neutrality are not mutually exclusive and that sustainably managed urbanization could increase carbon sequestration, especially in rural areas.

An urban climate model emulator has been used with a multi-model archive to estimate that in a high-emissions scenario, many cities will warm by over 4 K during local summers. Near-global relative humidity decreases highlight the potential for green infrastructure and more efficient urban cooling mechanisms.

Nature-based solutions for climate adaptation are not comprehensively addressing the climate–biodiversity–society nexus, limiting their capacity to promote urban transformation. However, notable transformative examples of urban nature-based solutions do exist, especially in the Global South.

Individual exposure to heat is associated with adverse health and economic outcomes. Here, the authors show that people of color and people living in poverty bear a disproportionate burden of urban heat exposure in almost all major cities in the continental United States.

The authors investigate the infiltration potential of more than 500 vacant lots in the City of Buffalo, NY, USA. They found that the expanding footprint of pervious cover as urban vacant land provides stormwater volume retention benefits on an event and annual basis.

The genetic architecture underlying rapid adaptive responses to novel environments are poorly understood. A study of great tits from nine European cities finds that urban adaptation in a widespread songbird occurred through unique and shared selective sweeps in a core-set of behaviour-linked genes.

Here, the authors use metabolomics and sequencing to assess changes in chemicals and microbial communities, including fungi and microeukaryotes, across an urbanization gradient in South America.

The risks to human well-being of floods in the United States have long been overlooked and underestimated, particularly for low-income and marginalized communities. In Los Angeles, flood risks are disproportionately high for historically disadvantaged populations and communities already facing social inequities.

Evaluating the heat risk among city dwellers is important. Here, the authors assessed the heat risk in Philippine cities using remote sensing data and social-ecological indicators and found that the cities at high or very high risk are found in Metro Manila, where levels of heat hazard and exposure are high.

The value of ecosystem services in cities around the world is highly uncertain. This Review focuses on ten of the most commonly cited urban ecosystem services and presents a synthesis of the scholarship on the factors that moderate the value and equitable distribution of such services.