Aims: Cities and their surrounding areas provide the ground for creating opportunities. Moreover, these places reveal systematic socio-economic fault lines, gaps, inequalities, and structural poverty. Cities are centers where ecosystems cross their functional thresholds and reinforce inequalities and vulnerabilities with increasing demands and pressures on limited natural resources. Therefore, it is time to move quickly from the extraction-based model in the last century to a renewable, flexible, and nature-based model which accepts the limitations of our world. 

Methods: Therefore, this study aims to identify the concept of productive city as a novel concept in the theoretical field of urban planning using the systematic review method based on a four-stage model via formulating the search strategy of papers and search process considering terms of productive city, productive urban planning, urban productivity and nature city in the top citation databases. In total, 214 papers were identified from 2013 to 2022 in the initial search, 68 of which were selected as eligible for deeper investigation and response to the research questions. 
Findings: This research indicate since adapting to the effects of climate change and resilience against environmental hazards requires a long-term perspective based on understanding nature. 
Conclusion: applying the concept of the productive city as a nature-based approach, guaranteeing social regeneration, economic and ecological sustainability, and functional-spatial continuity of cities in facing the upcoming challenges and environmental hazards, and reduce the pressures on natural resources. Furthermore, this seems necessary in contemporary urban development plans.