As climate extremes escalate and urban populations swell, the future of climate resilience may hinge on cities the world has yet to study.
By Phillip Mwangangi, for Ethical Business
Climate change research focused on cities is expanding rapidly – but overwhelmingly leaves out fast-growing urban areas in Africa and Asia, according to a new global study published in Nature Cities.
Using keyword searches and machine learning to analyse over 50,000 studies from 1990 to 2022, the researchers found a heavy concentration of literature on large cities in the Global North, such as London, New York and Berlin, while cities such as Goma (Democratic Republic of Congo), Surat (India), and Huế (Vietnam) remain largely absent from the academic record.
“While cities like London, New York and Berlin are extensively studied, fast-growing cities such as Goma, Surat and Huế are barely visible in the literature,” said Prof. Felix Creutzig of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, an author of the study and a contributing author to the upcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on climate change and cities.
The authors note that many of the underrepresented cities have contributed very little to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet face some of the most severe consequences of climate change. Despite the rapid growth of urban populations in Africa and Asia, research remains concentrated on well-established urban centres in the Global North.
The study, which describes itself as the “first global stocktake of literature” on climate change and cities, was partly intended to support the IPCC’s forthcoming special report on the same topic, expected in March 2027. It highlights the need for broader representation in climate research to reflect the diverse urban challenges around the world.
Explosive growth, uneven coverage
The authors found that literature on climate change and cities has grown “exponentially,” with 84% of all relevant studies published between 2012 and 2022. The volume of research is growing 4.5 times faster than climate change literature in general.
Yet despite this growth, representation remains skewed. “The amount of literature on climate change in cities is much larger than previously estimated,” the paper states.
According to the analysis, more than 20,000 of the studies included are city-specific case studies. Yet a majority focus on urban centres in Europe (over 4,000 studies) and North America (over 3,000), with roughly one-third of the 8,900 studies on Asian cities focusing on China alone.
In contrast, 92% of African cities are covered by only one or no studies. Nigeria, the most researched African country in the dataset, has fewer than 400 studies, half of which focus on Lagos.
The study’s findings are visualised in an interactive map, which displays the concentration of research geographically. Cities appearing in more than five studies are rare in much of the Global South.
Underrepresented impacts and adaptation
The database was built using the open-access OpenAlex platform, with abstracts filtered through a machine-learning classifier to exclude irrelevant material. Keywords ranged from “urban” and “built-up” to “changing climate” and “carbon taxes.” The classifier then sorted the studies into four broad categories: mitigation, impacts, adaptation, and cross-cutting topics.
More than half of the papers focused on mitigation. Around 15,000 addressed the impacts of climate change on cities, while the remaining studies examined adaptation strategies and cross-cutting issues.
Lead author Dr. Simon Montfort of École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne noted that the growth in research on climate change and cities is “not really surprising” due to urban population growth. However, he said the current evidence base “includes few irrelevant articles” but may still be missing relevant studies, especially those from the physical sciences or non-English publications.
The authors also acknowledged that Indigenous knowledge systems are not captured in their database, as such information is often not documented in formal academic literature.
Dr. Doan Quang Van of the University of Tsukuba, and a lead author on the IPCC report, noted that “the English-only database likely leads to an underappreciation of non-English regions.”
Implications for the IPCC
The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) included only around 2,500 of the studies identified in the new analysis—approximately 5% of the total. The authors argue that without a more comprehensive literature base, the upcoming special report may “struggle to deliver a balanced and comprehensive review.”
“If cities can learn from each other’s experiences, the existing evidence could go much further in informing city practitioners,” said Dr. Montfort.
To help address the gap, the authors suggest that future efforts could group cities based on shared characteristics such as size, geography or language to enable “cross-city transfer learning from successful climate solutions.”
Dr. Tamara Janes of the UK Met Office, and an author on the upcoming special report, who was not involved in the study, described it as “useful and timely,” adding that it “will undoubtedly help the ongoing special report by providing a solid foundational understanding for the current state of urban research worldwide.”
Janes also noted that the study “is not only useful for researchers to design their research questions, but also for donor agencies as gaps in research can then be prioritised through flexible funding initiatives.”
Prof. Creutzig concluded: “For the IPCC and the broader research community, this is a call to action: to synthesise more, to look beyond familiar places and to take seriously the diversity of urban realities that will define the future of climate mitigation and adaptation.”
Dr. Winston Chow, co-chair of IPCC Working Group II, acknowledged the challenge: “The voluminous literature on climate change today presents challenges in its assessment. Our experts are aware of these challenges… and the IPCC is formally discussing this issue in a forthcoming expert workshop on methods of assessment.”
The authors hope their open-access, interactive database will serve as a “searchable, interactive, living” resource for researchers and decision-makers to better understand where knowledge exists—and where it urgently needs to grow.
