B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal
Connecting the general and particular in interdisciplinary urban research
Authors: Roberts, Patrick; Carleton, W. Christopher; Maezumi, S. Yoshi; Bebermeier, Wiebke; De Weerdt, Hilde; Dornhaus, Anna; Ebert, Claire E.; Fletcher, Roland; Graff, Sarah R.; Graham, Elizabeth; Heinicke, Christiane; Hu, Di; Klassen, Sarah; Kratimenos, Panos; Kundu, Debolina; Lawrence, Dan; Lewis, Carenza; Lucero, Lisa J.; Padawangi, Rita; Robles, Nelly; Romanowska, Iza; Rost, Stephanie; Seijas, Tatiana; Smith, Michael E.; Strickland, Keir; Toivanen, Mikko; Winkelmann, Ricarda; Wu, Fulong; Zuiderhoek, Arjan; Alinam, Zahra; Antonosyan, Mariya; Andrade, Victor Caetano; Findley, David Max; Gitau, Peter; Viegas, Danielle Heberle; de Medeiros, Julia; Kayuni, Martha; Lellau, Rebecca; Peters, Manuel J. H.; Rudd, Rachel; Schmitz, Jascha; Song, Shuang; Yang, Yiwei; Ziegler, Michael J.; Zuccarelli-Freire, Verónica; Bai, Xuemei; Kezer, Zeynep; Lobo, José; Ortman, Scott G.; Rybski, Diego; Sandholz, Simone; Zhang, Xiaoling
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publication year: 2026
Journal: Nature Cities
Volume: 3
First page : 671
Last page: 674
eISSN: 2731-9997
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-026-00461-9
Publication's open availability at the time of reporting: No Open Access
Publication channel's open availability : Partially Open Access publication channel
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-026-00461-9
Understanding urbanization trends, dynamics and environmental consequences is at the heart of charting sustainable futures in the 21st century. Interdisciplinary research is crucial to this, yet there often remains separation between the scales of urban analysis — searches for quantifiable, generalizable trends and detailed local, historical analyses — and between both scientific scales and policy. We argue for the importance of long-term institutional spaces and workflows that stimulate constant interaction between scalar perspectives and policy within a single epistemic, theory-based process to help to navigate an increasingly central way of human life.
Funding information in the publication:
The authors thank the Max Planck Society for funding the conference ‘Connecting Urbanism Across Time and Space’.
