This paper explores how criteria for socially just climate change adaptation and resilience-building are articulated and embedded within urban planning and decision-making. We assess recent evidence from the ten largest cities in the United States through a narrative review of key planning documents. Our results show that cities are variably operationalizing equity, inclusion, and justice criteria across four key decision-making stages: designing institutional arrangements, participatory practices, policy integration, and strategic implementation processes. Although cities are beginning to address differential vulnerability and adaptive capacity, more work is required to tackle unequal socioeconomic structures and their contributions to underlying drivers of climate injustice.