Last year EGU Great Debate “Transition to Next Generation Cities and Planet Earth future”(meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2017/session/25036) underlined the vital two-way interactions between geophysical systems and urban systems. This importance is also acknowledged by the IPCC, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the City Resilience Profiling Programme of UN Habitat, the Urban Agenda for EU (“Amsterdam Pact”), the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (in particular its Goal 11: make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable), as well as by large city networks such as the 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation and whose AGU is a partner, and ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability.

A few UN figures confirm the drastic importance of these interactions: the majority of the world population is already urbanised, and this level is expected to reach 80% for the developed countries and 60% in the emerging countries by 2050. In fact, the expected total growth of the world population will be in cities and most assets are already concentrated there.

Are these issues sufficiently addressed by geoscientists? Which actions should be considered? How to move forwards for Urban Geosciences? All EGU 2018 attendees are called to contribute to this townhall.