IntroductionThe key issue in urban sustainability is how to navigate trade-offs. Sustainable development in the age of unprecedented urbanization is not a smooth process but a tense negotiation amid incompatible, even conflicting goals. Cities have to continuously strike a trade-off between economic growth and ecological integrity, social equity and developmental efficiency, and densification and quality of life. The ability to detect, process, and manage these multifaceted trade-offs has consequently been the fundamental business of modern urban sustainability science and governance1.The Social-Ecological Systems (SES) framework has become a potent tool in explaining these complex interactions. The SES approach, built on the pioneering work of Elinor Ostrom on the management of common-pool resources like fisheries, forests, and irrigation systems, offers an indispensable resource in understanding the intertwined relationship between human institutions and natural ecosystems2. Its popularity across disciplines, including the emerging field of urban sustainability, reflects its success in explaining how communities can sustainably manage shared resources3. Yet, this disciplinary migration from natural resource commons to the highly artificial reality of cities has revealed a critical fault4. The initial framework was designed for contexts where the ecological system was the major resource5, but in cities, the built environment is an agentic and complex system with causal powers of its own. This mismatch has led to a persistent underrepresentation of the spatial dimension: the built environment tends to be treated as either a passive location of socio-ecological processes or as a technical infrastructure6, rather than as a dynamically operating system with its own structures, agency, and time7. The consequences of this gap are tangible. The multi-billion-euro MOSE flood barrier in Venice, a climate-adaptation project built to defend a UNESCO world heritage site, changes the historic waterfront landscape and lagoon ecosystem that form its identity8. These tensions are no mere trade-offs between social preference and ecological functionality. They are profound, time-laden conflicts shaped by the morphological configuration, material composition, and historical accumulation of the built environment, properties that constitute what we term the spatial system. Without a conceptual framework adequate to these properties, such conflicts remain poorly diagnosed and difficult to govern.The recognition that the binary structure of SES requires enrichment for urban complexity has generated productive responses from multiple directions. Within the SES tradition itself, frontier scholarship in urban ecology and landscape ecology has increasingly engaged with spatial heterogeneity, patch dynamics, and the co-production of urban landscapes, demonstrating that the broad SES intellectual project can accommodate spatial complexity9,10,11,12,13,14. Beyond SES, the Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS) framework, also termed Social-Ecological-Infrastructural Systems (SEIS), addresses this challenge by integrating technological and infrastructural systems as a third domain, advancing the understanding of infrastructure interdependence, cascading failures, and adaptive capacity in urban contexts15,16,17,18,19. In this paper, we propose a parallel and complementary extension from a different direction. The Social-Ecological-Spatial Systems (SESS) framework foregrounds the spatial system as an ontological domain in its own right. Drawing on urban morphology20, spatial production theory21, and the complexity science of urban form22,23, we argue that the built environment possesses configurational logic, material depth, and historical continuity that are not reducible to either ecological processes or infrastructural functions, and that these properties require a dedicated place in the analytical architecture of urban sustainability science.To develop and substantiate this argument, we first conduct a systematic review of 630 articles to empirically diagnose how the spatial system has been treated in urban SES scholarship. On the basis of these findings, we propose SESS framework. We then position SESS within the broader landscape of SES extensions through a conceptual comparison with the SETS framework, articulating their shared foundations and distinct analytical orientations. Finally, we illustrate the diagnostic capacity of SESS through the Venice MOSE case, demonstrating how the framework renders visible dimensions of urban conflict that existing approaches leave in the background.ResultsThe treatment of spatial system in urban SES researchIn our quantitative analysis of 630 articles, the distribution of spatial engagement is highly skewed. More than 90% of the literature does not address the built environment as a system with its own agentic processes. Articles involving no or minimal spatial interaction (Level 1 and 2) comprise 61.8% of the literature, in which space is either omitted or is mentioned briefly as a locational descriptor. Level 3, which constitutes 30.0% of the studies, is a typical method in which spatial variables such as land use or infrastructure are considered, but not theorized as a system. In marked contrast, Level 4, a profound theoretical or analytical treatment of space as a system, makes up only 8.1% of the literature. This macro-level observation provides the solid empirical background for the further theoretical evaluation and development of the paper. It should be noted that these findings characterize the body of literature retrieved through SES-specific search terms; scholarship engaging with urban spatiality through other frameworks falls outside the scope of this review and is addressed in the Discussion and Methods.The analytical frontier of spatial integration and its limitsTo delineate the boundaries of spatial integration and diagnose conceptual limitations, we conducted an in-depth analysis of these 56 Level 4 studies. In our thematic analyses, we found four main pathways in which space is already being incorporated into urban SES analysis. The Spatial Networks and Connectivity pathway mainly applies network theory to understand the ecological fragmentation and connectivity, examining how spatial connections mediate or inhibit flows24. The Urban Morphology and Design pathway connects directly to the physical form of the city, utilizing such tools as space syntax to synthesize urban form with resilience and human experience7. The Landscape Patterns and Multi-scale Analysis trajectory implements concepts of landscape ecology, where measures are used to comprehend how landscape structures influence socio-ecological processes over varying scales25. Lastly, the Spatially Explicit Modeling and Decision Support pathway uses computational models like the agent-based models to model city dynamics and assess the policy landscape.Although these pathways bear witness to a growing methodological refinement, the quantitative content analysis discloses imbalances in their conceptualization of space (Fig. 1). A comparison of 226 coded spatial concepts in the four categories shows a heavy skew towards the instrumental side of the spectrum, which means they treat space as a means to be measured or optimized. The discourse is dominated by Constitutive Elements and Relational Structures, which take 54.0% (\(n=122\)) of the total concepts employed. This trend is widespread, especially in Spatial Networks and Connectivity research, where these instrumental categories constitute 76.0% of the concepts. This implies that space is largely regarded as a set of physical elements or a system of functional networks, as opposed to a domain with its own internal logic, where configurational causality, historical continuity, and material depth operate as independent analytical dimensions. In contrast with this, Deep Attributes, which encompass the inherent, often slow-variable characteristics of the spatial system, are always marginal, comprising only 11.9% (\(n=27\)) of all concepts. The idea of Scale (\(n=22\)) predominates in this limited category, whereas the features which capture the historical and material character of the spatial system, like Historicity/Temporality (\(n=3\)), are virtually absent.Fig. 1: Quantitative analysis of spatial concepts in level 4 literature.Full size imageThe conceptual landscape of the 56 Level 4 coded studies is mapped in this figure. The analysis revealed four major research pathways depicted as primary boxes. This resulted in the identification and coding of 226 spatial concepts. These concepts were divided into four conceptual groups, coded by color in the figure: Constitutive Elements, Relational Structures, Processes and Dynamics, and Deep Attributes. The length of the colored bars in every pathway denotes the proportionate frequency of the concepts of every category, showing a strong bias of Constitutive Elements and Relational Structures, and a systematic neglect of Deep Attributes.This tendency confirms that even the analytical frontier of the urban SES literature exhibits three recurring theoretical limitations in its treatment of the spatial system. First, a tendency towards instrumentalism and reductionism is evident. Space is predominantly treated as a set of variables, such as in user-centric “affordance” concepts26, rather than as an agentic system27. This approach does not reflect the distinct causal dimension of the built environment itself, which actively determines results28. The result is that the description of complex spatial systems is often diluted to measurable indicators, such as a connectivity index or a building density, without exploring the inherent logic or causality of the spatial system being analyzed. Second, temporality and historicity are underrepresented. The literature leans toward fast variables (e.g., social activities, ecological flows), while the slow-variable nature of the built environment, including its historical stratification and path dependency, receives limited attention29. Third, the core materiality of the urban environment receives limited attention. Space is usually reduced to geometric relations or land-use typologies, thus leaving aside the physical qualities, material traits, and metabolic activities of the built environment, which are central to the energy consumption, ecological processes, and enduring well-being of a city30,31.The theoretical case for the spatial systemThe preceding review points to a more fundamental theoretical issue: the standard SES framework does not include an ontological category for the urban built environment as an agentic system. The argument for elevating the spatial system to co-equal status is based on three non-reducible properties of the built environment, grounded in well-established work in urban geography32,33,34, spatial production theory21, complexity science35, and theories of urban spatial development36, which argue that the spatial system operates according to its own internal logic.The first of these properties is material agency. The physical form modulates, directs, and restricts behaviors and flows37: the structure of a street network dictates the patterns of movement and the probability of encounter38, while the shape of buildings governs microclimates and energy use39. This causal force cannot be reduced to social preferences or ecological processes; it originates within the spatial system itself.The spatial system is also characterized by deep path dependency. As a classic slow variable40, urban infrastructure and buildings have considerable longevity and material inertia, and their effect may be felt for decades or centuries41. This inertia implies that the spatial system accumulates historical content, including cultural heritage values, and establishes powerful lock-in effects on development42,43. Many of the most intractable problems of urban sustainability arise from this conflict between rapid social needs and slow spatial organization.Third, the spatial system serves as the physical nexus of trade-offs. Whether increasing urban density for efficiency versus preserving green space for ecological services, or building flood defenses versus protecting historic districts, the conflict is ultimately expressed as a contest for the reconfiguration of finite physical space44. The spatial system is therefore the tangible medium where social goals and ecological functions materialize and collide. Treating it as a co-equal analytical domain allows these trade-offs to be translated from abstract policy debates into concrete, analyzable spatial problems.Conceptualizing the SESS frameworkBased on the preceding rationale, we propose the SESS framework by introducing the spatial system as a co-equal domain alongside the social and ecological systems45. Rather than listing every conceivable spatial variable, we pursued theoretical synthesis to identify the core ontological dimensions that provide the most analytical leverage.The SESS framework is conceptualized as a nested structure (Fig. 2). At its center, the focal urban system encompasses three intersecting domains: Spatial System (SP), Social System (SO), and Ecological System (EC). These are embedded within a multi-scalar context that includes not only the conventional Socio-economic and Political Context (S) and the Ecological and Geophysical Context (ECO), but also the Spatial and Infrastructural Context (SC). SC recognizes that large-scale infrastructural networks, regional morphologies, and spatial teleconnections cross the city boundary and serve as essential external forces6,46,47. This guarantees that the spatial domain is perceived not as an internal result but as a dynamic system that is affected by multi-scalar spatial mechanisms48,49. Figure 2 delineates the system boundaries and key interfaces within the focal system, including socio-spatial (I1), eco-spatial (I2), and socio-ecological (I3) dynamics. The cumulative effect of these interactions leads to a collection of measured social, ecological, and spatial outcomes (O). One of the central features of this framework is the explicit ontological structure of SP, characterized by three interrelated dimensions: Morphology and Configuration (to counter instrumentalism), Materiality and Metabolism (to counter the underrepresentation of materiality), and Historicity and Memory (to counter the underrepresentation of temporality). Together, these dimensions provide the analytical vocabulary for the Deep Attributes that our review found to be underrepresented30,50,51.Fig. 2: The SESS conceptual framework.Full size imageThe framework draws on components well established in SES, Human Ecosystem, and urban ecological traditions, but arranges them to give the spatial system (SP) co-equal analytical status alongside the social (SO) and ecological (EC) systems. The distinguishing design choices are twofold: first, SP is characterized by three ontological dimensions (Morphology & Configuration, Materiality & Metabolism, Historicity & Memory) that provide dedicated analytical space for properties of the built environment that tend to be subordinated when nested within other domains; second, the Spatial and Infrastructural Context (SC) is included as an external driver alongside the conventional Socio-economic and Political Context (S) and Ecological and Geophysical Context (ECO), ensuring that multi-scalar spatial mechanisms are explicitly represented.DiscussionSESS in the landscape of SES extensionsHaving established the empirical basis for the underrepresentation of the spatial system in urban SES research and proposed the SESS framework in response, we now position it within the broader landscape of SES extensions. As discussed in the Introduction, frontier SES scholarship has increasingly accommodated spatial complexity through ecological concepts such as heterogeneity and patch dynamics, demonstrating that the nested hierarchical structure of SES can in principle incorporate spatial concerns as sub-theories within existing domains. However, our review suggests that in practice this accommodation has been uneven: when the spatial system remains nested beneath the social or ecological domain, its ontological properties tend to be subordinated to the analytical priorities of the host domain, a pattern reflected in the persistent marginality of Deep Attributes (11.9%) even at the analytical frontier. The three properties outlined in our theoretical case (configurational causality, material inertia, and historical continuity) are not characteristics of either social behavior or ecological processes; they are properties of the spatial system itself. Subsuming them under either domain is not merely a practical difficulty but an ontological misattribution, comparable to treating ecological dynamics as a subdomain of social institutions. This motivates our choice to elevate the spatial system to co-equal status, not as a rejection of nested hierarchy, but as a strategic means to ensure that configurational, material, and historical properties receive sustained analytical attention.A structurally parallel choice has been made by the SETS framework, making a direct comparison particularly instructive. Since its early formulations15,52, SETS has developed into a substantial body of work spanning theoretical foundations16,17, empirical applications53,54,55, governance18, and comprehensive reviews19,56. SETS and SESS share a common diagnosis: the binary SES framework lacks sufficient conceptual space for the material, constructed dimensions of urban systems, and both respond by elevating a third domain to co-equal status, recognizing multi-scalar dynamics, path dependency, and cross-system interactions. Yet the two frameworks diverge in their intellectual lineage, their conception of the third domain, and consequently in the types of questions they are best equipped to address. We articulate these differences below along three dimensions that correspond to the ontological structure of the spatial system proposed above.The most immediate divergence is in spatial organization. SETS approaches the built environment primarily as a network of interconnected infrastructural systems, analyzing how water, energy, transportation, and communication networks interact with social and ecological systems16,18. The emphasis is on functional interdependence and cascading vulnerabilities. SESS, drawing on the tradition of urban morphology20,57,58, approaches the built environment as a configurational system whose spatial arrangement possesses causal properties of its own. A street network, in this view, is not only transportation infrastructure but a spatial configuration that shapes movement probabilities, encounter patterns, and the distribution of social activity through its topology28. Recent studies have reinforced the significance of this configurational perspective, demonstrating that urban morphological features exert nonlinear effects on ecological resilience59 and that spatial configuration constitutes a key variable in urban sustainability assessment60. This distinction matters analytically: the same physical object is understood through different causal logics, yielding different research questions and policy implications.A related distinction emerges around materiality. SETS engages with the material properties of infrastructure in terms of condition, capacity, age, and interdependency61,62. Materiality in this context is primarily functional: material degradation signals vulnerability, and material capacity determines service levels. SESS engages with materiality in a broader sense, drawing on urban metabolism studies30,31 and material stock analysis41,63. In this view, the material stock of the built environment is not only a functional asset but a repository of embodied energy, a record of construction history, and a determinant of future adaptation pathways through its sheer physical inertia. The analytical object here is not the biogeochemical flows themselves, which remain within the ecological domain, but the ways in which the physical stock and configuration of the built environment govern, constrain, and lock in the pathways through which such flows move. Recent research has quantified the scale of this challenge: Zhang et al. show that China’s building material stock accounted for 19% of the country’s total carbon emissions64, while Heisel et al. demonstrate the potential of high-resolution material stock mapping for evaluating whole-life carbon emissions at the urban scale65. These findings underscore that the material composition of cities constitutes a critical but often overlooked dimension of urban sustainability, one that SESS is designed to foreground.The third dimension, and the one where the analytical distance is greatest, concerns historicity. SETS addresses temporal dynamics through the lens of infrastructure lock-in and life-cycle management16. Time, in this framework, is primarily operational: it marks the aging of systems and the accumulation of sunk costs that constrain future decisions. SESS draws on a different conception of time, rooted in the morphological tradition of historical layering20 and in the growing body of scholarship on the tensions between climate adaptation and heritage preservation66. In this framework, the historicity of the built environment is not merely a constraint but a carrier of meaning: the accumulated layers of urban form encode collective memory, cultural identity, and symbolic value. This is the theoretical basis for the variable SP6 (Cultural Heritage and Place Identity), which has no direct counterpart in the SETS framework. The urgency of this dimension is underscored by recent findings that 80% of UNESCO World Heritage sites already face climate stress, yet the analytical tools for navigating the tension between adaptation and preservation remain underdeveloped.These differences are not deficiencies in either framework but reflections of their distinct disciplinary roots and analytical purposes. SETS is well-suited to questions about infrastructure resilience, functional interdependence, and adaptive capacity under stress. SESS is oriented toward questions about morphological agency, material continuity, and the temporal tensions between heritage and adaptation. The two are complementary, and future work could explore how the functional focus of SETS and the ontological focus of SESS might be integrated into a more encompassing analytical architecture for urban sustainability science.Illustrating SESS: the Venice MOSE caseTo demonstrate how these conceptual differences translate into distinct analytical perspectives in practice, we return to the Venice MOSE case. Rather than offering a full empirical application, we use the Venice MOSE case as a diagnostic illustration to show how the same urban challenge is refracted differently through SES, SETS, and SESS (Table 1; Fig. 3).Table 1 Three analytical perspectives on the Venice MOSE caseFull size tableFig. 3: Diagnostic illustration of the Venice MOSE case through three analytical frameworks.Full size imageThe three panels depict how the same climate adaptation challenge is refracted through SES (a), SETS (b), and SESS (c). Each panel maps the key variables, interactions, and trade-offs foregrounded by the respective framework onto the spatial context of Venice, its lagoon, and the MOSE flood barrier system. Variable codes correspond to those defined in Table 2. The comparison demonstrates the complementary relationship among the three perspectives.Table 2 Examples of second-level variables within the SESS framework for urban studies.Full size tableAn SES analysis (Fig. 3a) would frame this as a trade-off between social values (heritage appreciation, economic dependence on tourism, resident well-being) and ecological functions (lagoon ecosystem health, tidal dynamics, sediment transport). The governance challenge would center on how institutions mediate between these two domains. The built environment enters the analysis primarily as a passive object of protection or as context for social-ecological interactions.A SETS analysis (Fig. 3b) would add a valuable layer by foregrounding MOSE as an infrastructural system embedded in a network of interdependencies. It would examine how MOSE interacts with Venice’s water management infrastructure, transportation systems, and energy supply. The analysis would attend to infrastructure lock-in: the multi-billion-euro investment constrains future adaptation options and creates path dependencies in flood management strategy. It would also consider cascading risks: if the barrier system proves insufficient under accelerated sea-level rise, what are the consequences for interconnected urban systems? This perspective foregrounds dimensions that a standard SES analysis is not designed to prioritize.A SESS analysis (Fig. 3c), while sharing the recognition that MOSE must be understood as more than a social-ecological trade-off, foregrounds a different set of questions organized around the three ontological dimensions of the spatial system. In terms of Morphology and Configuration (SP1), the project’s 1.6 km of mobile barriers comprising 78 steel gates, together with concrete caissons, breakwaters, artificial islands housing control systems, and navigation locks that maintain selective vessel transit during closures, collectively constitute a configurational intervention in a spatial system whose urban morphology has remained broadly continuous since the Middle Ages. Venice’s Outstanding Universal Value rests on the integrity of the morphological relationship between city, lagoon, and sea, a relationship co-produced over more than a millennium67. The MOSE infrastructure reorganizes the spatial configuration of the three inlets that have historically mediated this relationship, replacing the historically continuous permeability of these thresholds with a managed, intermittent connectivity, altering the morphological legibility of the lagoon boundary at landscape scale, disrupting the seasonal migration pathways of fish species that depend on uninterrupted lagoon-sea exchange (I2)68, and reconfiguring the accessibility patterns of island fishing communities whose livelihoods have been organized around these tidal thresholds for centuries (I1)69.In terms of Materiality and Metabolism (SP3, SP4), the consequences of this configurational change become visible when traced through the lagoon’s material flows. Under normal tidal conditions, ~60% of the lagoon’s water volume is exchanged with the Adriatic Sea during each tidal cycle70, and peak discharge through the inlets can reach 20,000 m³/s during spring tides71. Each MOSE closure temporarily halts this exchange. As sea levels rise, closures are becoming more frequent: the barriers have been activated with increasing regularity since becoming operational in 2020, and modeling studies project that under high-emission scenarios, MOSE closures during autumn months may exceed 20% of the time, substantially reducing water exchange with the open sea and exacerbating eutrophication risks in confined areas of the lagoon72. Meanwhile, analysis of recent storm events reveals that each major surge results in a net sediment loss of ~14,000 tons from the lagoon, with barrier operations affecting the spatial distribution of sediment import and export across the three inlets73. Reduced sedimentation also threatens the vertical accretion of salt marshes, compromising habitats that support the lagoon’s biodiversity (I2)74. These metabolic flows are thus governed by the physical operation of a spatial structure whose design thresholds embed specific climate projections into the material fabric of the city, and whose load-bearing limits define the upper boundary of the system’s adaptive capacity. The causal chain extends further into the social domain: the same hydrodynamic changes that alter ecological processes also condition the productivity of clam aquaculture and artisanal fisheries that have sustained lagoon communities for centuries (I3)69.Most distinctively, in terms of Historicity and Memory (SP5, SP6), the case brings into focus a conflict between two temporal orders operating in the same physical space. MOSE embodies a logic of future-oriented engineering designed for projected climate scenarios on a decadal timescale, yet its long-term efficacy is uncertain: studies suggest that accelerating sea-level rise may require increasingly frequent closures that progressively transform the lagoon from an open tidal system into a periodically enclosed basin71. Venice’s built environment, by contrast, embodies an accumulated heritage whose value derives from historical continuity across centuries. The spatial entanglement of these two temporal orders is rendered most tangible in the Venice Arsenal, where the MOSE command center and lagoon management functions have been housed since 2011 within a historic complex that symbolized the maritime power of the Serenissima for centuries before falling into decades of decay. The restoration of the Arsenal to accommodate MOSE operations simultaneously safeguards a heritage of extraordinary architectural value and repurposes it as a hub for climate-adaptation engineering, condensing within the same physical structures the very temporal collision between accumulated identity and future-oriented intervention that characterizes the broader case. UNESCO has repeatedly assessed the combined effects of climate change and human interventions on the property’s built fabric and landscape attributes, warning that unresolved threats could warrant inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger67. Such warnings carry force precisely because the accumulated morphological and material identity of the city constitutes the basis upon which heritage governance frameworks (SO1) and community attachment (SO6) are organized; any spatial reconfiguration therefore simultaneously destabilizes the social structures built upon it (I1). The Climate Heritage Paradox is thus not merely a social preference conflict but a temporal collision traversing all three domains of the SESS framework. The infrastructure built to protect heritage simultaneously transforms the very spatial conditions that constitute it: the open relationship between city and sea, the tidal rhythms embedded in Venetian architectural fabric, and the morphological character of a lagoon landscape co-produced over a millennium.The comparison is not intended to establish a hierarchy. Each framework illuminates dimensions that the others leave in the background. The purpose is to demonstrate that SESS generates a distinct and complementary perspective, one particularly valuable for challenges where the morphological, material, and historical properties of the spatial system mediate the interactions between social and ecological processes, and where rendering these mediating properties analytically visible is a precondition for adequate diagnosis.Analytical implications and future directions of SESSTable 3 illustrates how the SESS framework reframes the analysis of key urban challenges by rendering the configurational, material, and historical properties of the spatial system analytically visible.Table 3 Reframing key urban challenges using the SESS frameworkFull size tableBy grounding abstract trade-offs in the configuration, materiality, and history of the built environment60, the SESS framework opens a rich research agenda that will further integrate urban sustainability science into a more interdisciplinary realm. One major direction is the modeling of the temporal complexity of urban evolution. Future studies should explore the relationship between the slow spatial system with its inertia and lock-in and fast-moving social and ecological variables. It necessitates the creation of new methodologies that couple high-resolution urban form analysis with life-cycle analysis of the built environment and dynamic ecosystem service modeling. Recent advances in high-resolution material stock mapping63 and urban morphology-sustainability assessment60 provide promising methodological foundations for such integration. In addition, the framework promotes research aimed at measuring the constraining influence of the path dependency of the spatial system on future adaptation pathways, determining critical thresholds of urban transformation.The implications of the SESS framework for urban governance are also considerable, as it calls for a more spatially aware approach to policymaking. It reminds policymakers that any intervention is not simply an input into a social or ecological system but a reconfiguration of a spatial system with enormous inertia and long-term effects. Sustainable urban futures thus necessitate the breaking of sectoral silos. It requires merging urban planning, environmental management, and cultural heritage conservation within an integrated analytical framework to develop holistic and adaptive policies. The SESS framework, together with the complementary perspectives offered by SETS and frontier SES scholarship, provides a conceptual foundation for such integration.LimitationsA number of methodological limitations should be acknowledged. Our systematic review was restricted to peer-reviewed journal articles in English indexed in Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus75. This inevitably introduces publication bias, as pertinent gray literature and non-English research are excluded. Furthermore, the search strategy was designed around SES-specific terminology, which means that scholarship engaging with urban spatiality through other conceptual vocabularies, including the SETS literature, socio-technical systems research, urban metabolism studies, and spatially advanced work in urban ecology, was not captured in the quantitative review. In particular, spatially rich concepts such as heterogeneity, patch dynamics, and place, which appear frequently in ecologically and geographically oriented SES research, were not included as search terms; a complementary review organized around such vocabulary would likely reveal additional dimensions of the field’s engagement with space. Our findings therefore characterize a specific body of literature rather than the full breadth of urban sustainability scholarship. We have sought to address this limitation through the qualitative comparison with SETS presented in Discussion, but a future review mapping spatial treatment across multiple frameworks would be a valuable complement. In addition, the review was limited to journal articles, excluding book chapters and monographs. Some of the most integrative spatial thinking in the SES tradition has been developed in longer-form publications (e.g., ref. 12.13), which permit the kind of extended, exploratory synthesis that journal articles often cannot accommodate.The four-level coding system though strictly implemented and tested with near-perfect inter-rater reliability, inherently reduces sophisticated theoretical treatment to ordinal categories, entailing a degree of interpretation. In our qualitative analysis, we have strategically analyzed the Level 4 studies to explore the analytical frontier. As a result, quantitative analysis of the broader literature (Levels 1-3) was conducted to determine the degree of spatial engagement and not the quality of content. This approach, while necessary to map the macro-structure of the field, can miss emergent spatial conceptualizations within the literature. Lastly, the SESS framework is presented as a conceptual contribution. While its analytical capacity has been illustrated through the Venice MOSE case, the framework requires rigorous empirical testing and operationalization across diverse urban contexts to fully validate its utility.MethodsThis systematic review was conducted and reported following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines76 (Fig. 4).Fig. 4: PRISMA flow diagram for the systematic literature review.Full size imageBased on the guidelines of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA), this diagram depicts the literature screening and selection process. Web of Science and Scopus were searched first and yielded 1301 records. Following the elimination of duplicates and non-English, non-peer-reviewed literature, 687 unique records were filtered. In the course of title and abstract screening, 57 articles were filtered out because they were non-urban, rural. A total of 630 articles were included as they met the inclusion criteria and were utilized in the following quantitative synthesis. The articles were coded according to the level of spatial engagement on a four-level ordinal scale. The articles of the Level 4-subset, which constitute the analytical frontier of the field, were chosen as the subjects of qualitative content analysis.Search strategy and selection criteriaWe searched the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases for peer-reviewed journal articles published in English from January 1973 through December 2024. The search string combined three conceptual domains using Boolean operators: (“social-ecological system*“ OR “socio-ecological system*“ OR “SES framework”) AND (“urban” OR “city” OR “cities”) AND (“resilience” OR “adaptation” OR “sustainability”). The search strategy was intentionally designed around SES-specific terminology in order to diagnose how the spatial system has been treated within this particular body of literature. As a consequence, scholarship that engages with urban spatiality through other conceptual vocabularies, including the SETS framework, socio-technical systems research, and urban metabolism studies, was not captured in the quantitative review. This scope is addressed as a limitation in the Discussion, where we complement the quantitative findings with a qualitative comparison between SESS and SETS.Studies were included if they met four criteria: (1) they explicitly employed SES as a core analytical framework; (2) their geographic focus was on urban built-up areas; (3) they addressed themes of urban resilience, adaptation, or sustainability; and (4) they were peer-reviewed journal articles in English. We excluded conference proceedings, reports, book chapters, studies focused purely on natural or rural systems, and articles that mentioned SES only peripherally without substantive application.Screening and data extractionAfter removing duplicates, the search yielded 687 records. Two reviewers independently screened all records using a two-stage protocol. The first stage involved screening titles and abstracts for relevance (e.g., non-urban, non-SES), which excluded 57 articles. The remaining 630 articles were coded in the second stage for the depth of spatial engagement using a four-level ordinal scale defined as follows: Level 1 (Absent), indicating no discussion of the built environment or urban spatial form, with “Urban” used only as a locational descriptor; Level 2 (Minimal), signifying a cursory mention of the urban context without analyzing spatial characteristics or their influence on system dynamics; Level 3 (Moderate), representing a substantive discussion of spatial elements (e.g., land use, infrastructure) as variables, but where space is treated primarily as context or constraint rather than a domain with its own internal logic; and Level 4 (Substantial), for studies featuring explicit theorization or detailed analysis of spatial morphology as an ontological domain component with its own structure, dynamics, or causal powers. Detailed operational criteria, decision rules, and examples for this scale are provided in the Supplementary Information.Considering the coding scale is ordinal, we assessed inter-rater reliability using Quadratic Weighted Kappa (\({\kappa }_{w}\)), which accounts for the magnitude of disagreement between raters77. The inter-rater reliability was almost perfect (\({\kappa }_{w}=0.831,\,95 \%\,{{{\rm{CI}}}}\,\left[0.799,\,0.860\right]\))78, and all disagreements were resolved through consensus discussion. Following this consensus process, final agreement reached 100% for all coded articles. The full dataset of all 630 records is provided in Supplementary Data Set 1. The second stage involved a full-text review of only those studies coded as Level 4. This selective approach is theoretically justified, as these articles represent the analytical frontier of spatial integration within the SES framework and are therefore most informative for diagnosing existing limitations and identifying pathways for theoretical extension79. For each of these articles, we extracted publication details, geographic context, SES framework variant, the conceptualization and operationalization of spatial dimensions, analytical methods, and key findings using a standardized protocol80 (Supplementary Data Set 2).Data synthesisWe employed a convergent mixed-methods synthesis81. This involved a quantitative summary of the spatial engagement coding results (\(n=630\)) to document the prevalence of the identified underrepresentation. This was followed by a qualitative, interpretive synthesis of the Level 4 studies (\(n=56\)). We conducted a thematic analysis to identify recurring pathways of spatial integration.A quantitative content analysis of the applied spatial vocabulary was carried out to assess conceptual imbalances in these pathways. We classified spatial concepts in four different categories. This ontological classification is based on existing frameworks in the study of urban spatial analysis and morphology that distinguish between that which constitutes urban form, how it is configured in relation, and the processes that produce it20,57,58. The former two categories are more instrumental conceptions of space: Constitutive Elements, which encompasses the discrete physical constituents of the urban landscape (e.g., infrastructure, land use); Relational Structures, which concerns the relationships between these constituents (e.g., connectivity, accessibility). The latter two categories capture more systemic views: Processes and Dynamics, encompassing the behaviors and changes within the spatial system (e.g., urban morphology, spatial patterns); and crucially, Deep Attributes, which encompass the inherent, often slow-variable characteristics that reflect the ontological depth of the spatial system (e.g., scale, historicity, materiality). The frequency of concepts within these categories was analyzed to identify conceptual imbalances.Data availabilityThe complete dataset of all 630 coded articles, including bibliographic information, screening decisions, spatial engagement coding, and coding notes, is provided as Supplementary Data Set 1 and is available on Figshare (ref. 82). The detailed qualitative analysis of the 56 Level 4 studies is provided as Supplementary Data Set 2 and is available on Figshare (ref. 83).Code availabilityNo custom software, custom code, or analysis scripts were developed as a key output of this systematic review. 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Full dataset of 630 records for a systematic review of spatial system treatment in urban social ecological systems research. figshare https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.32615478 (2026).Xu, J. Qualitative analysis of 56 Level 4 studies on spatial system treatment in urban social ecological systems research. figshare https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.32615481 (2026).Download referencesAcknowledgmentsThe authors have no acknowledgments to declare.FundingThis work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Project No. 52278052).Author informationAuthors and AffiliationsSchool of Architecture, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, ChinaJintu Xu & Jin DuanAuthorsJintu XuView author publicationsSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarJin DuanView author publicationsSearch author on:PubMed Google ScholarContributionsJ.X. conceived the study, developed the conceptual framework, designed the systematic review protocol, conducted the literature search, screening, coding, data organization, qualitative analysis, prepared the figures, tables, and supplementary materials, analyzed and interpreted the results, and drafted and revised the manuscript. J.D. conceived the study, developed the conceptual framework, designed the systematic review protocol, supervised the study, analyzed and interpreted the results, and critically revised the manuscript. Both authors approved the final version and agree to be accountable for the work.Corresponding authorCorrespondence to Jin Duan.Ethics declarationsCompeting interestsThe authors declare no competing interests.Peer reviewPeer review informationCommunications Sustainability thanks the anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Nandita Basu. 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