To tackle the climate crisis, cities must reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions rapidly. To aid these efforts, many cities are
interested in leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML). Researchers and practitioners, however, only begin to understand how ML can contribute to achieving climate targets in urban contexts. To provide an overview of application areas, and the potential leverage of ML to reduce GHG emissions, we systematically map research conducted over the past three
decades. We identify 1,206 relevant peer-reviewed records, and discover that research involving ML is expanding more rapidly
than the literature on urban climate mitigation more broadly. The research focus largely aligns with urban mitigation options
that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessed as having high impact. We also find that research concentrates
on the ML-strong regions Eastern Asia, Europe, and Northern America. This regional focus can influence research agendas,
and we observed signs that this can lead to bias regarding which ML applications are pursued in urban climate action.