A Critical Review of Infrastructure Resilience in Fast-Growing, Hot, and Arid Cities of the Global South

Urban growth in the Global South is accelerating, with fast-expanding cities in hot and arid regions facing mounting pressures from water scarcity, ex- treme heat, and widening socio-spatial inequalities. Existing resilience frame- works remain constrained by static indicators, limited cultural adaptation, and weak accommodation of informality and hybrid governance. This study conducts a structured review of recent peer-reviewed literature on urban and infrastructure resilience in these settings, using a PRISMA-guided systematic process to identify dominant methodologies, contextual gaps, and emerging analytical trends. The analysis shows that current frameworks struggle to account for climate-specific hazards, uneven institutional capacity, and the inter-dependencies that shape cascading risks across water, energy, cooling, and mobility systems. In response, the paper introduces a six-layer, capacity- tiered resilience framework designed to adapt its analytical depth to a city’s data availability, governance maturity, and resource constraints. This model advances the field by embedding equity, informality, and multi-system inter- dependencies as structural requirements rather than optional considerations, enabling a more scalable and context-responsive approach for fast-growing, data-scarce urban environments. Resilience is treated as a capacity-sensitive process, the study offers a practical pathway for cities to progress from ba- sic qualitative diagnostics toward more advanced, predictive assessments as institutional and technical capabilities evolve.