Climate & Planetary Futures

The accelerating pace of biodiversity loss in urban areas is among the least visible yet most consequential crises of the twenty-first century. Too often, biodiversity decline is imagined as something that happens in distant rainforests or along coral reefs, far removed from where most people live. But the extinction unfolding in cities—the places where seventy percent of humanity will reside by mid-century—is no less urgent. Roads, high-rises, and suburbs steadily erase habitats, while surviving species are forced into fragmented pockets where survival is precarious. This decline is not simply ecological; it reshapes inequality, public health, and cultural identity. The challenge is whether cities can be reimagined as habitats for life in all its forms, or whether they will become epicenters of a silent extinction.

Step onto a downtown street in July, and you can feel it: the shimmer of heat radiating off asphalt, the suffocating stillness between buildings, the way concrete seems to hold onto the sun hours after it sets. Scientists call this the “urban heat island” effect, but for residents, it is simply summer survival. As global temperatures climb, these islands are not minor anomalies—they are epicenters of climate risk, with consequences distributed unequally across city blocks.