Citizen science contributions to sustainable urban transformation, urban sustainability and urban planning: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Urban areas face complex sustainability challenges that demand new approaches to knowledge production. While citizen science (CS) is increasingly recognised as a promising avenue in scientific research, its specific contributions to urban sustainability, sustainable urban transformation, and urban planning remain insufficiently synthesised. This systematic literature review analyses academic publications that explicitly reference CS to clarify its current and potential roles in these domains. Our review identifies a marked increase in scholarly attention—between 2022 and 2024—reflecting the growing recognition of CS as a valuable approach for addressing urban sustainability issues. Using the bibliometric-network tool VOSviewer, we reveal three major thematic clusters: (1) biodiversity, ecology, and conservation; (2) methodologies and practices; and (3) humans and communities. Well-established strands, especially in biodiversity and conservation, highlight the long-standing integration of CS into species monitoring, ecological assessment, and food-production initiatives. The role of citizens emerges as highly diverse, ranging from experiential experts to collaborative data producers. More recent work points to emerging interdisciplinary applications linking community engagement with environmental health, public health, and climate change. Despite this momentum, key gaps remain. These include the limited participation of underserved communities as well as still weak integration with environmental and climate-justice frameworks. Addressing these gaps is critical for fulfilling the transformative role that supranational bodies already assign to CS in tackling contemporary urban sustainability challenges.