The Future Earth Urban Knowledge-Action Network (Urban KAN) has spearheaded a major international effort to co-design a new research agenda for urban sustainability. The outcomes of this initiative are detailed in the paper “Reimagining Urban Science for Global Sustainability: Five Strategic Research Areas,” published in Global Sustainability (Cambridge University Press). This publication outlines critical priorities to guide urban research over the next decade.

Key Outcomes

Through a collaborative process involving expert workshops, global consultations, and community surveys, the Urban KAN community has defined five strategic research themes. These themes are designed to guide the evolution of urban science worldwide:

• Accelerating Urban Sustainability Transformations: Advancing pathways for rapid, systemic, and inclusive transitions in cities.
• Ensuring Equity and Inclusivity: Embedding justice at the core of urban sustainability and addressing social and spatial inequalities.
• Amplifying Innovation in Low and Lower-Middle Income Countries: Recognizing and supporting grassroots and context-specific solutions emerging from the Global South.
• Negotiating Complexity and Systemic Risks: Developing new approaches to govern cities as interconnected social-ecological-technological systems.
• Navigating Environmental Change: Enabling cities to mitigate and adapt to climate change and address biodiversity loss and other global environmental crises.

Global Co-Production

This ambitious research agenda is the result of a comprehensive horizon-scanning process led by the Urban KAN Steering Committee. It brought together a diverse range of views from researchers, practitioners, and policymakers from various disciplines and geographies and was supplemented with an expert literature review on identified themes. The agenda synthesizes insights from more than 120 research questions gathered through webinars, global congresses, and community surveys, ensuring a truly global and transdisciplinary perspective.

Why It Matters

This co-produced roadmap for urban research and action provides a clear and actionable framework that directly supports international sustainability agreements, including the Paris Agreement, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and the New Urban Agenda. The agenda emphasizes the necessity of system-wide approaches, cross-regional collaboration, and stronger science-policy-practice linkages to accelerate a just and resilient urban future for all.

Building Momentum

Since its inception, Urban KAN has grown to more than 460 members worldwide, connecting researchers and innovators across Future Earth’s global networks. This new research agenda represents a significant milestone, effectively aligning urban science with the most urgent sustainability challenges of our time and setting the stage for transformative collaborations in the years to come. 

“We expect that the five priority research themes that have been co-designed together with the urban science community and related actors more broadly will strengthen the basis for connecting urban knowledge and action, stimulate wide-ranging collaboration, and have an impactful reach worldwide.” Says Dr. Şiir KILKIŞ, one of the authors of the manuscript and co-chair of the Urban Knowledge Action Network.

Reference

Bai, X., Sioen, G. B., Kılkış, Ş., McPhearson T., Niazi Z., Dodson J., Atmaja T., Fukushi K., Frantzeskaki N., Nagendra H., Wan-Yu S., Elmqvist T., Muñoz-Erickson T. A., Deng X., Güneralp B., Lwasa S., Zama N. (2025) Reimagining urban science for global sustainability: Five strategic research areas. Global Sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2025.10025