Cities are often segregated by class and ethnicity, with work often playing a key role. Focusing on digitally advanced Tallinn, Estonia, this study finds that minority tech workers are less segregated from the majority whereas non-tech workers are more isolated, deepening class-based segregation.

This study shows that greening peri-urban areas boosts rainfall within cities, revealing their hidden role in shaping intra-urban precipitation and supporting climate-resilience planning.

Deglobalization threatens urban food security. Regional food system infrastructure, exemplified by the Ontario Food Terminal, combined with protected farmland, can reliably supply cities with fresh produce at scale.

Urban parks enhance microbial functionality but reduce genomic diversity compared with forests due to nutrient enrichment and pH changes. Urbanization drives short-term functional gains at the cost of long-term evolutionary flexibility.

Analyzing over 85,000 crowdsourced commuter posts from three different cities, this study reveals widespread thermal discomfort in urban underground systems and identifies recurrent peaks by hour, day of the week, and season.

Connected neighborhoods may shape brain health in later life. In 514 older adults in Sydney, higher street connectivity was associated with larger but faster-declining hippocampal tail volume, suggesting the need for age-sensitive urban planning.

Closures of the Strait of Hormuz transmit immediate economic shocks into cities, and drive increasing costs across transport, food and housing. Without targeted social protection and rapid electrification, crisis responses risk entrenching the fossil fuel dependence that underpins urban vulnerability.

Rebuilding cities after conflict often prioritizes political or economic interests at the expense of long-term resilience, equity and inclusion. Post-war recovery must break away from traditional, interest-driven patterns. Instead, reconstruction should be redefined through a science-driven, multidisciplinary lens that has people and communities, social justice, and sustainability at its heart.

Cities around the world are making historic investments in green infrastructure. Local governments critically shape the social and ecological benefits that these networks of vegetation provide through spatial planning, but these processes remain underdeveloped in both research and practice.

Urban kampungs in Indonesia are more than ‘informal settlements’. They function as critical urban infrastructures that sustain climate resilience through distributed domesticity and enable inclusive governance through everyday social cooperation. This framing broadens the understanding of urban infrastructure beyond technical systems.

Living in Guangzhou shows how data governs not through commands but by shaping what can be seen, reported and acted upon. Although smart governance promises efficiency, everyday encounters reveal the limits of digital systems that make some urban problems visible while leaving others beyond view.

In the narrow lanes of informal settlements in African cities, autonomous mobility might emerge differently than anticipated in other parts of the world. Reflecting on emerging mobility services in Kampala and Nairobi, Ibrahim Mubiru proposes how human-centered design can help informal settlements to prepare for the arrival of autonomous transport.