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Civil society engagement is important for enabling urban systems transformations that meet community needs. The development of Future Earth Australia’s Sustainable Cities and Regions: A 10-Year Strategy for Urban Systems was underpinned by cross-sectoral workshops in 7 Australian urban areas and interviews with key stakeholders to create a shared vision of both current and desired future urban structure and policy. We then created an online survey to gauge broader community feedback on the vision which emerged from these workshops and interviews, to compare their outcomes with the views of community members who could be directly impacted by urban decision-making. The survey consisted of 35 questions, which were shaped by the issues emerging from the workshops and interviews. The sample was self-selected, and the 641 respondents represented a cross-section of individuals interested in sustainable cities. Our survey results supported and expanded on the major conclusions of FEA’s National workshop and interview processes, including the need to develop transparent and responsive decision-making processes, limit waste and pollution and develop effective housing and transport alternatives with mixed-use neighborhoods and adequate green space.

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Planetary health is a concept that emerged from public health and is of central interest for geographers. Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) launched its planetary health initiative in 2020, which is a first instance of it being adopted by an Australian local government as a sustainability policy framework. This article presents an initial case study arguing for and testing how to gain empirical insights from developing local planetary health initiatives. Using an online survey of Blue Mountains residents from 2020, we elucidate key opportunities and challenges associated with implementing planetary health in local contexts. We found that respondents experience the impacts of environmental change in varied ways and want to do more to address environmental change.They demand action from governments and others to act, yet do not understand well the mechanisms available to local governments to undertake such action. We also established that planetary health shows promise in its ability to accommodate diverse and scalar experiences and action from personal to communal. Thus, our key claim is that it could be an inclusive basis upon which local governments and communities can deliberate and make decisions about sustainability. However, local governments could experience difficulties in implementing planetary health should deliberation not improve community understanding of the levers available to local government to act on environmental change and the nature of shared responsibility for place-based sustainability. We suggest geographers could do more work on such matters.

Transformative urban development is urgent to achieve future sustainable development and wellbeing. Transformation can benefit from shared and cumulative learning on strategies to guide urban development across local to national scales, while also reflecting the complex emergent nature of urban systems, and the need for context-specific and place-based solutions. The article addresses this challenge, drawing on extensive transdisciplinary engagement and National Strategy co-development processes for Australia. This includes generation of two frameworks as boundary objects to assist such transdisciplinary strategy development. An ‘enabling urban systems transformation’ framework comprises four generic overarching transformation enablers and a set of necessary underpinning urban capacities. This also built cumulatively on other sustainability and urban transformation studies. A complementary ‘knowledge for urban systems transformation’ framework comprises key knowledge themes that can support an integrated systems approach to mission-focused urban transformations, such as decarbonising cities. The article provides insights on the transdisciplinary processes, urban systems frameworks, and scoping of key strategies that may help those developing transformation strategies from local to national scales.Science highlights• Transdisciplinary national urban strategy development is used to distil generic frameworks and strategy scopes with potential international application.• The frameworks also build on other published framings to support convergent, cumulative and transdisciplinary urban science.• The ‘enabling transformations’ and ‘urban knowledge’ frameworks include the perspective of those developing sustainable urban systems strategies.• The enabling framework also informs ‘National Urban Policy’ and ‘Knowledge and Innovation Hub’ strategies, and prevailing power imbalances.• The knowledge framework can help frame urban challenges, missions and knowledge programs.Policy and practice recommendations• An urban ‘transformation imperative’ and ‘strategic response’ can be co-developed from local to national scales.• Local initiative is crucial to drive urban strategies, but sustained national leadership with coherent policy across sectors and scales is also key.• Diversity in engagement participation and processes generates whole-of-urban-systems and local-to-national perspectives.• Urban solutions are context-specific but generic frameworks can help collaborative issue framing and responses.• Collaborative issue framing informed by generic frameworks can bring broader perspectives to context-specific and contested policy and practice issues.