Manhattan skyscrapers, rather than rustic rural towns, are quickly becoming the picture of sustainable living in the twenty-first century. San Francisco, Copenhagen and Singapore each top their regions in the Green City Index. As sites of innovation and economic dynamism, these places exemplify a blend of density and livability that large, prosperous cities in the 'global south', such as Mumbai in India and São Paulo in Brazil, increasingly emulate.

A novel nested flood model (MSN_Flood) is applied to simulate complex coastal-fluvial urban flooding in order to critically examine the model's capability to forecast evolution of urban inundation. The model demonstrates high accuracy of outputs without incurring the computational expense of high spatial resolution over the entire model domain. MSN_Flood provides full characteristics of water levels and flow regimes necessary for flood hazard identification and flood risk assessment.

Urban green space provides health benefits for city dwellers, and new evidence suggests that microorganisms associated with soil and vegetation could play a role. While airborne microorganisms are ubiquitous in urban areas, the influence of nearby vegetation on airborne microbial communities remains poorly understood.

The effects of urban heat islands(UHIs) have a substantial bearing on the sustainability of cities and environs. This paper examines the efficacy of green and cool roofs as potential UHI mitigation strategies to make cities more resilient against UHI.

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Traffic noise affects a large number of people, particularly in urbanized areas. Noise causes stress and annoyance, but less is known about the relationship between noise and depression. The researchers investigated the association of residential road traffic noise with depressive symptoms using 5-year follow-up data from a German population-based study.

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