The literature landscape on 1.5°C climate change and cities

Abstract

Cities are key for achieving the 1.5 °C warming limit of the Paris Agreement. However, synthesizing policy insights from the urban literature is a challenge, due to its rapid growth, breadth of topics and relative lack of assessments so far. Here we introduce methods from computational linguistics to build a systematic overview of research on transport, buildings, waste management and urban form. We find that the epistemic core of the mitigation-focused urban literature is currently centered on urban form and emissions accounting, while extensive research into demand-side options remain overlooked, including congestion and parking polices, active travel, and waste management. In the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 °C, and for meeting the target itself, all such city-scale opportunities need to be examined.