Climate change is likely to increase droughts. The vulnerability of cities to droughts is increasing worldwide. Policy responses from cities to droughts lack consideration of long-term climatic and socio-economic scenarios, and focus on short-term emergency actions that disregard sustainability in the connected regional and river basin systems. We aim to explore the dynamics of the water-energy-land nexus in urban systems suffering increased climate change-related droughts, and their implications for sustainability. We complement a case study with a literature review providing cross-regional insights, and detail pervasive knowledge, policy and ambition gaps in the interaction between cities and droughts. We show that water availability with low emissions, without compromising ecosystems and with low costs to society, poses a local-scale limit to sustainable urban growth, a new concept delineating the limits to growth in cities. We conclude that urban and river basin planners need to institutionalize transparency and cross-sectoral integration in multi-sector partnerships, to consider long-term land use planning together with water and energy, and to apply integrated climate services to cities. Our study reveals the importance of including land, water and energy in long-term urban planning, and to connect them with the county, region, river basin and global scales.

气候变化可能会加剧干旱。全球城市对干旱的脆弱性正在增加。城市应对干旱的政策缺乏对长期气候和社会经济情景的考虑，而侧重于忽视相关区域和流域系统可持续性的短期紧急行动。我们旨在探索遭受气候变化相关干旱加剧的城市系统中水-能源-土地关系的动态及其对可持续性的影响。我们通过提供跨区域见解的文献综述来补充案例研究，并详细说明城市与干旱之间相互作用中普遍存在的知识、政策和目标差距。我们表明，低排放、不损害生态系统和对社会成本低的水供应，对可持续城市增长构成了局部范围的限制，这是一个描绘城市增长限制的新概念。我们得出的结论是，城市和流域规划者需要在多部门伙伴关系中将透明度和跨部门整合制度化，将长期土地利用规划与水和能源一起考虑，并将综合气候服务应用于城市。我们的研究揭示了将土地、水和能源纳入长期城市规划的重要性，并将它们与县、地区、流域和全球范围联系起来。并将综合气候服务应用于城市。我们的研究揭示了将土地、水和能源纳入长期城市规划的重要性，并将它们与县、地区、流域和全球范围联系起来。并将综合气候服务应用于城市。我们的研究揭示了将土地、水和能源纳入长期城市规划的重要性，并将它们与县、地区、流域和全球范围联系起来。