Keith, M. et al. A new urban narrative for sustainable development. Nat. Sustain. 6, 115–117 (2022).
Bettencourt, L. M. A. Introduction to Urban Science: Evidence and Theory of Cities as Complex Systems (MIT Press, 2021).
Brelsford, C., Lobo, J., Hand, J. & Bettencourt, L. M. A. Heterogeneity and scale of sustainable development in cities. Proc. Natl Acad.Sci. USA https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1606033114 (2017).
Moreno, E. L. Slums of the World: The Face of Urban Poverty in the New Millennium?: Monitoring the Millennium Development Goal, Target 11–World-Wide Slum Dweller Estimation (UN-HABITAT, 2003).
Mitlin, D. & Satterthwaite, D. Urban Poverty in the Global South: Scale and Nature (Routledge, 2013).
Kates, R. W. & Dasgupta, P. African poverty: a grand challenge for sustainability science. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 16747–16750 (2007).
Porto de Albuquerque, J. et al. The role of data in transformations to sustainability: a critical research agenda. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 49, 153–163 (2021).
Linard, C., Gilbert, M., Snow, R. W., Noor, A. M. & Tatem, A. J. Population distribution, settlement patterns and accessibility across Africa in 2010. PLoS ONE 7, e31743 (2012).
Olaniran, T. O. & Aule, T. T. Systematic approach to sustainable urban development: reviewing challenges of informal settlements and peri-urban growth in sub-Sahara Africa. Urban Plan. Transp. Res. 13, 2495660 (2025).
Brelsford, C., Martin, T. & Bettencourt, L. M. Optimal reblocking as a practical tool for neighborhood development. Environ. Plann. B https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808317712715 (2017).
Brelsford, C., Martin, T., Hand, J. & Bettencourt, L. M. A. Toward cities without slums: topology and the spatial evolution of neighborhoods. Sci. Adv. 4, eaar4644 (2018).
Soman, S., Beukes, A., Nederhood, C., Marchio, N. & Bettencourt, L. Worldwide detection of informal settlements via topological analysis of crowdsourced digital maps. ISPRS Int. J. Geoinf. 9, 685 (2020).
World Health Organization & United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water—2015 Update and MDG Assessment (World Health Organization, 2015).
Li, C. et al. Slum and urban deprivation in compacted and peri-urban neighborhoods in sub-Saharan Africa. Sustain. Cities Soc. 99, 104863 (2023).
Satterthwaite, D. et al. Building resilience to climate change in informal settlements. One Earth 2, 143–156 (2020).
Steffen, W. et al. Planetary boundaries: guiding human development on a changing planet. Science 347, 1259855 (2015).
Elias, P. & de Albuquerque, J. P. in Localizing the SDGs in African Cities Sustainable Development Goals Series (eds Croese, S. & Parnell, S.) 115–131 (Springer, 2022); https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95979-1_8.
Sheth, S. K. & Bettencourt, L. M. A. Measuring health and human development in cities and neighborhoods in the United States. npj Urban Sustain. 3, 7 (2023).
Montgomery, M. R. The urban transformation of the developing world. Science 319, 761–764 (2008).
Blumenstock, J. E. Fighting poverty with data. Science 353, 753–754 (2016).
Burke, M., Driscoll, A., Lobell, D. B. & Ermon, S. Using satellite imagery to understand and promote sustainable development. Science 371, eabe8628 (2021).
Borel-Saladin, J. Data dilemmas: availability, access and applicability for analysis in sub-Saharan African cities. Urban Forum 28, 333–343 (2017).
Sahasranaman, A. & Bettencourt, L. M. Life between the city and the village: scaling analysis of service access in Indian urban slums. World Dev. 142, 105435 (2021).
Bettencourt, L. M. A., Lobo, J., Helbing, D., Kühnert, C. & West, G. B. Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 7301–7306 (2007).
Bettencourt, L. M. A. The origins of scaling in cities. Science 340, 1438–1441 (2013).
Streets as Tools for Urban Transformation in Slums (UN-Habitat, 2014).
Pandey, B., Brelsford, C. & Seto, K. C. Infrastructure inequality is a characteristic of urbanization. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2119890119 (2022).
Parnell, S. & Pieterse, E. Africa’s Urban Revolution (Zed Books, 2014).
The State of African Cities, 2010: Governance, Inequality and Urban Land Markets (UN-Habitat, 2010).
Patel, S., Baptist, C. & D’Cruz, C. Knowledge is power—informal communities assert their right to the city through SDI and community-led enumerations. Environ. Urban. 24, 13–26 (2012).
Jean, N. et al. Combining satellite imagery and machine learning to predict poverty. Science 353, 790–794 (2016).
Yeh, C. et al. Using publicly available satellite imagery and deep learning to understand economic well-being in Africa. Nat. Commun. 11, 2583 (2020).
Prieto-Curiel, R., Patino, J. E. & Anderson, B. Scaling of the morphology of African cities. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 120, e2214254120 (2023).
Kohli, D., Sliuzas, R., Kerle, N. & Stein, A. An ontology of slums for image-based classification. Comput. Environ. Urban Syst. 36, 154–163 (2012).
Friesen, J., Taubenböck, H., Wurm, M. & Pelz, P. F. The similar size of slums. Habitat Int. 73, 79–88 (2018).
Blumenstock, J., Cadamuro, G. & On, R. Predicting poverty and wealth from mobile phone metadata. Science 350, 1073–1076 (2015).
Herfort, B., Lautenbach, S., Porto de Albuquerque, J., Anderson, J. & Zipf, A. The evolution of humanitarian mapping within the OpenStreetMap community. Sci. Rep. 11, 3037 (2021).
Beard, V. A., Satterthwaite, D., Mitlin, D. & Du, J. Out of sight, out of mind: understanding the sanitation crisis in global south cities. J. Environ. Manag. 306, 114285 (2022).
Quaye, I., Amponsah, O., Azunre, G. A., Takyi, S. A. & Braimah, I. A review of experimental informal urbanism initiatives and their implications for sub-Saharan Africa’s sustainable cities’ agenda. Sustain. Cities Soc. 83, 103938 (2022).
Daniere, A. G. & Takahashi, L. M. Poverty and access: differences and commonalties across slum communities in Bangkok. Habitat Int. 23, 271–288 (1999).
Leonita, G., Kuffer, M., Sliuzas, R. & Persello, C. Machine learning-based slum mapping in support of slum upgrading programs: the case of Bandung City, Indonesia. Remote Sens. 10, 1522 (2018).
Gulyani, S., Bassett, E. M. & Talukdar, D. Living conditions, rents, and their determinants in the slums of Nairobi and Dakar. Land Econ. 88, 251–274 (2012).
Rose, A. et al. LandScan Global 2020. LandScan https://doi.org/10.48690/1523378 (2020).
Tusting, L. S. et al. Mapping changes in housing in sub-Saharan Africa from 2000 to 2015. Nature 568, 391–394 (2019).
Hoornweg, D. & Pope, K. Population predictions for the world’s largest cities in the 21st century. Environ. Urban. 29, 195–216 (2017).
Chi, G., Fang, H., Chatterjee, S. & Blumenstock, J. E. Microestimates of wealth for all low- and middle-income countries. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2113658119 (2022).
Anderson, J., Sarkar, D. & Palen, L. Corporate editors in the evolving landscape of OpenStreetMap. ISPRS Int. J. Geoinf. 8, 232 (2019).
Barrington-Leigh, C. & Millard-Ball, A. The world’s user-generated road map is more than 80% complete. PLoS ONE 12, e0180698 (2017).
Pieterse, E. Grasping the unknowable: coming to grips with African urbanisms. Soc. Dyn. 37, 5–23 (2011).
Turok, I. & McGranahan, G. Urbanization and economic growth: the arguments and evidence for Africa and Asia. Environ. Urban. 25, 465–482 (2013).
European Commission, Joint Research Centre Description of the GHS Urban Centre Database 2015: Public Release 2019. (Publications Office, 2019).
Marchio, N. & Smith, M. M. mansueto-institute/kblock: beta release. Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12636819 (2024).
Marchio, N. mansueto-institute/kblock-analysis: updates 06-19-2025. Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15702173 (2025).
