The impetus for this review emerged from the growing recognition that many international humanitarian actors have yet to become operationally effective in responding to crises affecting urban areas. Many of these actors have been finding that traditional approaches – often rurally derived or camp-focused – have been ill-suited to the particular challenges presented by densely populated urban areas (IASC 2010). To help address these challenges, this paper aims to inform DFID’s current work on urban humanitarian response by assessing the current state of literature on the subject, with a particular focus on both the impacts of crises and humanitarian responses on urban areas. Overall, the paper emphasizes the need to reframe the problem away from an emphasis on good/‘best’ practices and towards the need to better understand urban systems and processes as a basis for informing more contextually appropriate and dynamic urban responses.