Soils underlie cities and are foundational to parks and other green infrastructure, but urban soils are often polluted or otherwise unsuitable. This study tests the potential for combining sediment construction wastes with high-carbon organic amendments, identifying mixtures that provide essential urban soil functions.

Green roofs enhance urban ecosystem services, but the long-term vegetation health and design’s impact is underexplored. This study shows a temporal increase in vegetation health and identifies key factors and thresholds that support sustained vegetation health, offering guidance for effective green roof planning and design.

Urbanization disrupts oak tree microbiomes by reducing beneficial fungi and increasing plant and human pathogens across leaves, roots and soils, with consequences for tree health, urban climate mitigation and potential human exposure to pathogens.

Media informs how we see our cities and ourselves. Using news headlines, this study reveals how the press coverage of Egypt’s New Administrative Capital City project reinforced a vision of urban growth that echoed commercial aspirations.

State planning goals in South Africa often misalign with the lived realities of communities despite shared quality-of-life visions. Analysis across low-income communities reveals temporal, spatial and responsibility disconnects between government directives and urgent local needs.

At the nexus of machine learning and urban climate change mitigation, this systematic map identifies a fast growth of research, highlights under-researched impact areas and reveals geographic biases. It also offers recommendations to promote the impactful deployment of machine learning solutions in this urban domain.

Cities are under growing pressure from climate change, biodiversity loss and social inequities. Yet new research highlights how biological, digital and social innovations can help urban systems to adapt and thrive. This issue of Nature Cities showcases advances from artificial intelligence applications to inclusive policy models to self-healing infrastructure, which offer pathways towards more-resilient urban futures.

The authors discuss the challenges of curbing land take and the complexity of achieving the net-zero limit. They call for a shift in perspective beyond the restrictive logic of traditional land-use planning and suggest that the regenerative potential of cities be unleashed.

Urban resilience is rooted in our ability to harmonize with nature and cultivate deeper relationships with local climates. Mojtaba Parsaee reflects on how the historic neighborhoods of four cities have nurtured his poetic bond with harsh climates, which inspires his vision of resilience.

Cities frequently find themselves on the frontlines of the climate crisis, facing acute environmental risks while also holding the potential to lead transformative changes. In this joint Focus issue between Nature Climate Change and Nature Cities, we explore how cities are evolving into strategic actors by harnessing public education, engineering innovation and governance frameworks to drive climate solutions.

Cities — as with complex living systems — could benefit from check-ups, as is happening in a new program in China. However, improvements are needed through adjusting health assessment indicators, enhancing public participation, and integrating the insights of both Eastern and Western medicine.