Cities are human creations where many of the emissions causing climate change originate. Every aspect of daily life in cities, which spans buildings, transit, food, energy, and water, relies on fossil fuels that materially contribute to climate change. This paper explores the need for research to better uncover the processes driving urbanization in order to develop novel ways to mitigate climate impacts on Earth. Areas of fruitful research include better quantification of teleconnections between cities and their hinterlands and coupling those to the socio-economic drivers and organization of those relationships; the financialization of much urban policy; understanding where cities fit in the global economic order and their role in generating economic growth, and the ways in which they are also seen as leaders of sustainability and climate actions, but constrained in so-doing by the nested and tiered layers of institutions they operate within. This paper concludes by outlining ways for cities to transition toward nurturing human well-being and reducing their impacts on planetary processes resulting in the proposed new Earth epoch - the Anthropocene. (c) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.