A critical knowledge pathway to low-carbon, sustainable futures: Integrated understanding of urbanization, urban areas and carbon

This synthesis integrates some of these diverse viewpoints as a first step toward a coproduced, integrated framework for understanding urbanization, urban areas, and their relationships to carbon. It suggests the need for approaches that complement and combine the plethora of existing insights into interdisciplinary explorations of how different urbanization processes, and socio-ecological and technological components of urban areas, affect the spatial and temporal patterns of carbon emissions, differentially over time and within and across cities.

It also calls for a more holistic approach to examining the carbon implications of urbanization and urban areas, based not only on demographics or income but also on other interconnected features of urban development pathways such as urban form, economic function, economic-growth policies, and other governance arrangements. It points to a wide array of uncertainties around the urbanization processes, their interactions with urban socio-institutional and built environment systems, and how these impact the exchange of carbon flows within and outside urban areas.