The Open City: FAIR² Datasets Unlocking New Frontiers in Urban Sustainability

Cities generate vast quantities of data — on mobility, air quality, energy, housing, green space, public health, and social equity. Too much of it sits in silos, undocumented and hard to reuse, limiting its power to shape policy and accelerate progress toward sustainable urban futures.

Frontiers’ new FAIR² Data Article changes that. For the first time, urban researchers can publish a dataset as a standalone, peer-reviewed, fully citable contribution — curated to be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable, and AI-ready. As Field Chief Editor, Professor James Evans, puts it:

“We are thrilled to be offering this new article format that further unlocks the power of open research. Publishing FAIR data sets enables researchers to generate new insights from existing data, as well as encouraging and rewarding the curation of quality data. Making data about cities across the world discoverable will help us discover new frontiers in urban sustainability.”

This Research Topic invites FAIR² Data Articles that build the shared evidence base for sustainable cities. We welcome datasets on any dimension of urban sustainability — including mobility and transport, environmental quality, energy and the built environment, biodiversity and green infrastructure, climate resilience, housing and equity, urban metabolism, citizen-generated data, and Earth observation. Datasets from underrepresented regions, longitudinal series, and harmonized cross-city collections are especially encouraged.

Each accepted submission receives the same recognition as a traditional research article, with its own DOI and an interactive FAIR² Data Portal that lets others explore the data through AI chat, visualizations, and ready-to-run notebooks. Authors are supported throughout by Clara, Frontiers’ AI data steward, and the published dataset is preserved for the long term under an open ODC-BY 1.0 license — aligned with NIH, Horizon Europe, and UKRI data-sharing mandates.

We invite urban researchers, data scientists, city authorities, and civil society organizations to contribute the datasets that will define the next decade of sustainable cities research.

We welcome high-quality, well-documented datasets from cities across all regions and income levels, including but not limited to:

- Urban mobility, transport, and active travel
- Air, water, soil, and noise quality monitoring
- Energy consumption and the built environment
- Urban biodiversity, green and blue infrastructure
- Climate adaptation, heat exposure, and resilience indicators
- Housing, equity, segregation, and social inclusion
- Waste flows, circular economy, and urban metabolism
- Citizen-generated and participatory data
- Remote sensing and Earth observation of urban areas

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Community Case Study
• Conceptual Analysis
• Curriculum, Instruction, and Pedagogy
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Specialty Grand Challenge
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: FAIR² Data Article, Urban sustainability, Open research data, Urban analytics Sustainable Cities, Data reuse

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.