Systematic review supports a spatial system framework for social ecological systems in urban sustainability science

The social-ecological systems framework, a foundation of sustainability science, faces a persistent challenge in urban contexts. Here we show that its origins in common-pool resource governance have contributed to the built environment being treated as background rather than as a system with its own configurational logic, materiality, and history. A systematic review of 630 articles shows that more than 90% of reviewed urban SES studies do not engage the built environment as a dynamic system and largely treat space instrumentally. Drawing on urban morphology, spatial production theory, and urban metabolism, we propose a social-ecological-spatial systems framework that introduces the spatial system as a third domain structured by morphology and configuration, materiality and metabolism, and historicity and memory, and illustrate its analytical value through the Venice MOSE flood barrier case. A systematic review of 630 urban social ecological systems studies finds that more than 90% do not treat the built environment as an active spatial system. The study proposes a spatial system framework to integrate urban form, materiality, and history into urban sustainability science.