Integrating Sustainability into Urban Planning: A Systematic Review of Policies Addressing Hazard Risks and Climate Change

Natural and human-made disasters threaten cities increasingly, thus requiring a combination of disaster risk reduction and sustainable development strategies. Although vulnerability assessment methods and urban sustainability policies have improved significantly, these two fields remain separate, leading to fragmented policies that may work against resilience objectives. This paper provides an overview by conducting a systematic review of 87 peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2024 that describe and analyze the intersection of disaster prevention policies and sustainability practices in urban planning. Thematic analysis was employed, and five major themes were revealed: policy implementation frameworks, climate adaptation strategies, preparedness mechanisms, vulnerability assessment approaches, and sustainability evaluation systems. The findings reveal a critical disconnect: on the one hand, vulnerability assessments highlight the structural–technical aspect and, at the same time, ignore the sustainability indicators (resource efficiency, social equity, and ecosystem services), while on the other hand, sustainability frameworks deliberately shut out disaster risk awareness from the core evaluation criteria. This methodological separation produces policy conflicts where disaster interventions may compromise environmental goals, and sustainability initiatives may increase hazard vulnerability. This review concludes that resilient cities require assessment methodologies synthesizing disaster risk and sustainability dimensions. A novel conceptual integration framework is suggested that combines hazard-exposure-vulnerability analysis with environmental–social–economic sustainability pillars, thus laying the groundwork for future operational tools. This joint viewpoint accepts that hazards mainly affect development that is not sustainability-oriented, while sustainable systems through adaptive design and equitable resource distribution inherently lower the vulnerability.