Urban Economic Resilience: Climate Extremes, Systemic Transition Risks, and Sustainable Policy

Cities are increasingly exposed to climate extremes such as heatwaves, typhoons, floods, and compounding hazards, which disrupt infrastructure, labor markets, supply chains, public finance, and resource systems. The economic impact of these shocks is spatially uneven, shaped by land and housing markets, density and agglomeration, and a city's position within the wider urban system. Understanding resilience therefore requires attention to how land values, housing markets, labor-market access, and local fiscal capacity transmit and redistribute these shocks within cities and across the urban–rural gradient. These physical risks do not operate in isolation; they interact with transition risks arising from decarbonization policies, technological change, market shifts, and regulatory uncertainty. Together they can generate systemic shocks that undermine urban economic resilience, especially in resource-dependent and rapidly urbanizing regions. Although research has advanced on climate risk assessment, urban adaptation, and sustainable transitions, these literatures often remain separate. There is a need to connect quantitative modeling of physical and transition risks with urban economic analysis, policy frameworks, and urban resource management. This Research Topic addresses that gap by examining how cities can anticipate, absorb, recover, and transform under climate-related systemic risks while pursuing sustainable development.The goal of this Research Topic is to advance integrated understanding of how urban economies can remain resilient when climate physical risks and systemic transition risks interact. Current research often treats heatwaves, typhoons, floods, and other climate extremes as separate from the policy, market, and technological shifts associated with low-carbon transitions. This separation limits the ability of cities to design coherent adaptation, resource management, and economic development strategies. We seek contributions that quantify and model these interacting risks, evaluate their distributional and fiscal consequences across space and income groups, and assess sustainable policy responses. By bringing together climate risk modeling, urban economics, resource management, public finance, and governance research, this collection will identify pathways for cities to anticipate shocks, strengthen adaptive capacity, and pursue just, low-carbon, and resilient development. The expected outcome is a set of actionable frameworks, methods, and evidence that can inform city governments, investors, utilities, and international agencies in managing systemic climate-related risks.We welcome contributions that address, but are not limited to: (1) quantitative modeling of heatwave, typhoon, flood, and compound climate physical risks to urban economies, including their effects on land and housing markets and urban form; (2) systemic transition risks arising from decarbonization, regulation, technology, and market change; (3) interactions between physical and transition risks in urban resource systems, infrastructure, labor, and finance; (4) urban economic resilience metrics, stress testing, and early warning; (5) sustainable policy, governance, and investment frameworks for adaptation and just transition, including their distributional and local fiscal effects; and (6) case studies from resource-dependent, coastal, and rapidly urbanizing cities. We invite original research, review, perspective, policy and practice, and methods articles. Contributions should combine rigorous quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method approaches (with credible identification strategies or spatial and structural models where relevant), with clear implications for urban sustainability and resource management. Submissions should make clear how the spatial organization of the city matters to the question addressed. Topic editors: Shupei Huang, Xin Xu Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/87578/urban-economic-resilience-climate-extremes-systemic-transition-risks-and-sustainable-policy