More than half of the world’s nearly eight billion people live in a city. By 2050, cities will be home to more than twothirds of the world’s population.

Cities are increasingly recognized as being crucial to addressing major global and societal challenges. However, despite the reality that cities are crucial nexuses of people, environments and technologies, most urban research is siloed. Occasional papers on urban issues are featured in general-science journals, but such papers are the minority. A new journal published by Nature aims to bring together researchers studying cities:

We are urbanizing Earth, drawing ever more people and supporting resources into cities. As we grapple with the varied but related implications, the time is ripe for an outlet focused integratively on this broad horizon.

Nature Cities aims to deepen and integrate basic and applied understanding of the character and dynamics of cities, including their roles, impacts and influences — past, present and future.

The first issue is out.

Cities have been from the very beginning a key theme in Mind The Post (for evident complex reasons). They are natural science, aren’t they? Aren’t we? And It is nice to see some good colleagues collaborating in this new academic publishing initiative.

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