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Bridging the scale between the local particular and the global universal in climate change assessments of cities

Nature Cities volume 2, pages 369–378 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Identifying gaps in urban climate change assessment is crucial for developing the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on cities. To bridge the gap between the understanding of local interventions and global climate goals, we call for the strengthening of assessment tools such as urban typologies, case study synthesis and big geospatial data studies. We sort research gaps into five overarching themes: (1) urban form, (2) data and artificial intelligence, (3) policies and governance, (4) system transformation and (5) potentials, costs and losses. Using these methods for categorizing and analyzing cities based on shared characteristics will enable the tailoring and scaling of local climate solutions to global contexts.

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Fig. 1: Assessment gaps and relevant assessment methodologies and tools.
Fig. 2: Urban data and physical infrastructure.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge contributions to discussions by participants of the What Works Climate three-day workshop on Scoping Gaps in Assessments on Cities and Climate, held virtually in November 2023. We especially thank V. Castan Broto for detailed feedback on the manuscript and critical guidance on improving the main argument.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Potsdam and Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Felix Creutzig & Nikola Milojevic-Dupont

  2. University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

    Felix Creutzig

  3. Technical University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Felix Creutzig

  4. Urban Systems Lab, The New School, New York, NY, USA

    Timon McPhearson

  5. Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, NY, USA

    Timon McPhearson

  6. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Timon McPhearson

  7. Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden

    Timon McPhearson

  8. University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Ronita Bardhan

  9. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Camille Belmin

  10. Singapore Management University, Singapore, Singapore

    Winston T. L. Chow

  11. Department of Geography, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (LMU), Munich, Germany

    Matthias Garschagen

  12. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Angel Hsu

  13. The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK), Ankara, Türkiye

    Şiir Kılkış

  14. Institute of Remote Sensing and GIS, Jahangirnagar University, Savar, Bangladesh

    Sheikh Tawhidul Islam

  15. Regional Centre for Space Science and Technology Education in Asia and the Pacific (RCSSTEAP), International Innovation Institute, Beihang University, Hangzhou, China

    Sheikh Tawhidul Islam

  16. Ahmedabad University, Ahmedabad, India

    Minal Pathak

  17. Institute for Applied Economic Research (Ipea), Brasília, Brazil

    Rafael H. M. Pereira

  18. ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, Bonn, Germany

    Pourya Salehi

  19. Central European University, Vienna, Austria

    Diana Ürge-Vorsatz

Authors
  1. Felix Creutzig
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  2. Timon McPhearson
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Contributions

F.C. conceptualized the paper, designed the figures and drafted a first version of the manuscript and the tables. C.B. and N.M.-D. refined and contributed to Table 1. T.M., R.B., C.B., W.C., M.G., A.H., Ş.K., S.T.I., N.M.-D., M.P., R.H.M.P., P.S., D.Ü.-V. and D.S. provided text, input, feedback and references to the full manuscript, supported the specifications of Table 2, and helped to balance out the overall text.

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Correspondence to Felix Creutzig.

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Nature Cities thanks Sara Hughes, Carrie Mitchell and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Creutzig, F., McPhearson, T., Bardhan, R. et al. Bridging the scale between the local particular and the global universal in climate change assessments of cities. Nat Cities 2, 369–378 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00226-w

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