Enabling urban systems transformations: co-developing national and local strategies

Abstract

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.

How do governance visions, institutions and practices enable urban sustainability transformations? A study of Battambang and Sihanoukville, Cambodia

“…Transformative governance and decision-making in the context of urban sustainability transformations aim to re-direct urban development pathways toward sustainability and resilience (Fazey et al, 2017;Hölscher et al, 2019a). Governance reform is represented in all of the different transformative capacity conceptual frameworks/models in the literature (Wolfram, 2016;Ziervogel et al, 2016;Webb et al, 2023). Most often cited is Wolfram's "transformative capacities" for urban sustainability transformation, of which three of the 10 capacities focus on governance reform: (1) "inclusive and multiform governance;" (2) "transformative leadership;" and (3) "empowered and autonomous communities of practice" (Wolfram, 2016(Wolfram, , 2019.…”

Opportunities for the Transformation of Border Towns into Sustainable Systems in the Republic of North Macedonia by Applying the Integral Theory

“…Urban transformation, in the context of social processes, is the subject of observation, analysis and solution in urban sociology. Various scholars have focused on the sociological aspects and approaches to urban transformation [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15], arguing that cities can be understood as complex and emerging socio-ecological and technological systems. According to this statement, 'social' includes the cultural and economic dimensions as well as governance, 'ecological' includes the climate and biophysical elements and 'technological' includes the engineered and built environment [9,16,17].…”