Urban climate action planning case studies: A review of trends, approaches, and reported barriers and drivers

Cities' efforts to address climate change are extensively explored and analyzed in the literature. Learning from case studies reported in the literature provides valuable lessons for innovative climate solutions and reduces the risk of repeating mistakes in future urban climate action planning (CAP) processes. While urban CAP case study research has gained attention over the years, they are mostly narrow in scope and thematic focus, with fragmented knowledge and insights. Here, we systematically analyze 156 peer-reviewed articles on urban CAP to present a comprehensive overview of the planning process and synthesize the reported barriers and drivers across various case studies. Results show that urban CAP in 206 countries have been studied since 2006, with more than half of the countries found in the Global North, likely due to their status as "early adopters" of climate initiatives. We identify diverse focuses, with a heightening global research interest in adaptation planning, increasing steadily after the release of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report and the wave of urban pragmatism in climate change governance (2016 and beyond). Reported barriers and drivers are either intrinsic (i.e, endogenous concerns or core city values) or extrinsic (i.e, exogenous influence), observed across diverse spatio-temporal contexts. The results of this study can contribute to improved climate action planning, thereby enhancing urban resilience and sustainability.