Over the past 10-15 years, cities have emerged as clear leaders in global climate action. The wealth of frameworks, methods and tools aimed to support urban climate governance and decision-making have created a picture of progress on the topic, however, practical examples of success are limited to a limited group of forerunners. This research aims to address the gap between needs, theory and practice, by providing a critical review of the current developments from the lenses of sustainability

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... ience and ecological economics. Based on their integration, we developed ten minimum criteria for development and selection of actionable means: (1) legitimacy, salience and credibility; (2) consideration of social-ecological-economic dynamics; (3) critical pluralism; (4) inclusivity; (5) equality; (6) nexus; (7) transparency; (8) usability; (9) VUCA-fit; 10) transformative potential. The minimum criteria were used to assess 10 selected frameworks, 13 methods and 9 tools, providing decision-makers initial guidelines for making better choices. The analysis revealed that while comprehensive urban climate governance frameworks already exist, sophistication and usability of decision-support methods and tools require further work, while common reliance on simple means limits available opportunities. Thus, it is important to make multi-criteria, multi-objective, adaptive and robust approaches better accessible to urban decision-makers beyond the expert circles to support more effective climate action, while the suggested minimum criteria can be used to provide initial guidelines for such developments.