This study identifies the phenomenon of outsourced carbon mitigation in Chinese cities. It found that about 78% of these cities outsource their carbon mitigation efforts in varying degrees, which affects the way carbon mitigation policies should work.

This study uncovers the surprising interconnectedness of urban centers globally, finding that 3.2 billion individuals can access multiple urban tiers ranging from towns to large cities within an hour’s travel. It particularly emphasizes the strategic importance of intermediate cities in linking various urban and rural areas, crucial for effective regional development.

Globally, concrete materials are widely used to build urban settings, resulting in massive waste. The authors propose scenarios of industrial-scale application of concrete nitrogenation, to use concrete debris in cities to mitigate NO_x emissions.

This study estimates the green cooling distribution and the population most exposed to heat in 14 major European areas. It found that lower-income residents, immigrants and unemployed residents are more vulnerable compared with upper-income residents, nationals and homeowners.

This study examines long-term impacts of ‘redlining’, the historical practice of assigning values to residential areas in US cities based on race and class, on the vulnerability of communities to climate risks. Findings reveal that areas marked by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation as being less desirable for investment in the 1930s–1940s face disproportionately higher current and projected risks of flooding and extreme heat, in part due to their lessened environmental capital.

This study looks at nighttime land surface temperature in Indian cities to see how much they have warmed. It finds that urbanization has driven 60% additional warming in cities, with medium-sized cities influencing the most.

Mila Burns, an Associate Professor of Latin American Studies and History at the City University of New York, illustrates the effects that Lisbon has over time itself.

Urbanization processes reshape space — and the human and non-human relationships that play out in and through space — over time. The intensification of urbanization poses a range of threats to the natural environment and correspondingly to the socioeconomic welfare of urban residents. The articles in this issue highlight how, from the soil upon which cities are built to the trees, water and air that give life to urban spaces, inequality has become embedded as a structuring feature of urban natural environments.

Violence against women is a widespread and growing issue in cities worldwide, but it is rarely considered in urban planning. To meet this challenge, Elizabeth L. Sweet encourages renewed considerations of time, space and relationships in urban scholarship and planning.

Co-opting our cities for short-term ends can leave them brutalized and breathless. Theatre practitioner and performance-studies scholar Gargi Bharadwaj considers New Delhi’s key events from 2023 and the redemptive power of live performance to revive us.

A ‘Sister Cities for the Anthropocene’ network could address the challenges experienced by urban communities in the wake of Anthropocene-driven change.