Urban climate and human settlement environment interact with each other. Local Climate Zone (LCZ) promotes the description of urban morphology and the exploration of climate change, and provides a unified framework for the urban climate and human settlement environment studies. Much of the academic research has focused on urban thermal environment and climate risk, and is developing towards multi-factor climate simulation and consideration of socio-economic factors. This study reviewed themes, methods and main conclusions, found that "local climate zone", "urban heat island", "land surface temperature", "management" and "community" appeared most frequently. Using the bibliometrics and thematic analysis methods, the progress of urban climate and human settlements research from 2012 to June 2023 in terms of LCZ mapping, interactions, and adaptive strategies is compiled and summarized, and future research priorities are prospected. The results showed that (1) LCZ studies have been carried out in more than 280 cities around the world, and the popularization of LCZ global dataset has expanded the research scale and enriched the research content; (2) Most studies have analyzed the spatio-temporal characteristics of climate factors dominated by urban wind/thermal environment on the local scale, explored the causes of heterogeneity and their mechanism on human settlements, and revealed the importance of urban blue-green space for mitigation strategies such as optimizing cooling effect, preventing and controlling heat sources. Since 2018, LCZ thermal environment research had been diversified, and the research area had begun to appear metropolitan areas or urban agglomerations; (3) LCZ can assist in identifying areas of extreme exposure and vulnerability in human settlements. Recent studies tend to look for adaptive strategies in climate/ecological risk assessment and pay more attention to vulnerable and low-income populations. This review will be conducive to the macro-grasp of the research status and development trend, and provide ideas for subsequent research.