Abstract Conservation Units (CU) protect the environment and water resources, ensuring the integrity of the landscape. Thus, to understand the effects of the creation of the Piraquara Environmental Protection Areas (EPA), this study sought to understand changes in land use and land cover and the provision of ecosystem services that contribute to the water supply of the Metropolitan Region of Curitiba. Data from MapBiomas, the MOLUSCE program for projections and the benefit transfer method were used to estimate ecosystem services. The results indicate anthropization between 1991 and 2021, with a reduction in water bodies between 2011 and 2021. Projections for 2031–2051 indicate a reduction in forest and agricultural areas, an increase in water bodies and urban fragmentation. A decrease in support and regulation services was observed. It is concluded that the Piraquara EPA has a predominantly forested landscape and that the creation of the CU contributed to protecting the water sources and consolidating the landscape matrix.

For city planners, public experimentation has become an attractive tool to “look into the future”, increasingly including novel technologies: Actors test novel mobility options, such as autonomous driving on urban roads to receive real-world feedback on their prototypes; and digital technologies are used to create virtual spaces of experimentation to explore interventions in urban space before implementation. Paying explicit attention to the performative character of experiments and the mechanisms by which they make envisioned futures more plausible than others, we build on the concept of “techniques of futuring” (ToF) to better understand the role of experiments in urban transformations. We ask: How do urban experiments perform mobility futures and how does the performance make these futures plausible? We provide empirical insights on two cases of experimental environments in Munich: a living lab for autonomous driving and an urban digital twin for novel bicycle infrastructure design. We identify three core performative mechanisms by which urban experimentation contributes to making certain futures plausible: picturing the vision, preparing the city, and persuading the public. These mechanisms show how experiments involving novel technologies can become powerful in underpinning the presented visions of future mobility. At the same time, they call for caution when the allure of these mechanisms outplays alternative ways of deliberating and creating mobility futures. Explores the connection between experimentalism, performativity, and participation. Both virtual and real-world experimentation carry performative authority in making urban futures. The concept of Techniques of Futuring (ToF) provides an analytical lens for performative experimental practices. Suggests three performative mechanisms that are central in future-making: picturing, preparing, and persuading.

Abstract Current scholarship on urban transformation emphasizes the importance of learning, but the state of the art of research on learning dynamics in urban transformations is still conceptually and empirically fragmented. To address this deficit, we propose a research agenda and related conceptual apparatus that draws upon previous research in urban transformations and cognate fields. The proposed agenda is founded on the central concept of learning ecosystem and provides a conceptual tooling which can contribute to moving the field forward in its understanding of who learns what, how, where, when and to what effects in relation to urban transformations. The proposed agenda and conceptual framework contribute to the development of the field by providing an operationalizable array of concepts that can guide empirical research and by presenting an integrative framework for understanding learning in urban transformations which is compatible with established theoretical approaches in the field.

Abstract Real-World Laboratories (RwLs) are increasingly used as instruments of urban transformation, yet their complexity poses challenges for systematic documentation and cross-case learning. This article combines a detailed case report of an RwL on car-reduced neighborhoods in Munich with a critical reflection on the Case Reporting Scheme (CRS), a recently proposed framework for structuring documentation across RwLs. Applied retrospectively, the CRS supported data organization and facilitated interdisciplinary reflection through its tripartite framework of context, lab, and experiment features. However, limitations became apparent—particularly in capturing iterative, non-linear processes and in distinguishing overlapping subcategories. Based on our experience, we argue that while the CRS fosters structured reflection and transparency, it requires refinement and integration with complementary evaluation frameworks to fully capture the dynamics of urban experimentation. We further reflect on the CRS as a tool that facilitates communication and coordination within transdisciplinary teams and has the potential to improve project governance. Our study contributes to ongoing debates about the usability and further development of RwL documentation frameworks, especially regarding transferability and analytical depth. Our findings support calls for more comparative, empirically grounded approaches to evaluating and documenting urban transformation initiatives. We conclude by proposing the iterative and context-sensitive use of tools like the CRS as a foundation for more transparent, reflexive, and transferable practices in sustainability-oriented urban research.

Co-creation is becoming a widely used mode of urban governance and research for city-making and city-transitioning being conceptually entangled with experimentation, innovation and collaboration. In this paper, we address three questions to systematize knowledge about and advancing the research and practice of co-creation: Why co-create? How to co-create? With whom to co-create? We first present three distinct premises of co-creation that respond to the question of why to co-create, and mark advantages of co-creation in comparison to participatory processes: bridging and weaving knowledge for place-based urban transitions, emancipating urban policy and planning, and advancing research to transformative and transdisciplinary approaches that are socially relevant. We then present key practices and skills required for engaging in and organizing co-creation processes (i.e., how to co-create). Next to advocacy, communication, leadership, and organizational skills, we identify that creativity, playfulness, emotional intelligence, receptivity, and collaborative learning are important, yet often overlooked, skills and capabilities for co-creation. Finally, we investigate the politics of co-creation through the lens who is included in co-creation and how (i.e., with whom to co-create). We discuss future research on co-creation and its applications centered on measuring its impact against its premises while recognizing the importance of having different metrics and reflexive measures that can evaluate its deep impact and its relation to urban transitions.

This paper explores an innovative policymaking tool known as “Open Studios”. This is a participatory, multi-disciplinary two-day workshop which allows open discussion, interaction, and solution development between end users, researchers, and experts in a field. Taking into consideration issues on accessibility, equity, and scarcity of green spaces in urban centres, we developed and applied a new model of community building which is bottom-up, locally managed, and adaptable to the needs of its users: the “Ecosystems of Care”. We present the main features of this new way of organizing and structuring green urban areas, as well as our observations from two pilot projects which were created to understand the feasibility and applicability of this idea. We conclude by reflecting on our lessons learned from these applied experiments, the potential of Ecosystems of Care for improving the wellbeing of the population and look at issues related to their replicability and long-term sustainability.

Battambang has been identified as an exemplar for sustainability city development in Cambodia due to its success with the introduction of new programs and planning initiatives, which have led to recognition of its clean and green city status by the Cambodian Government and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Limited research has been done to date to investigate how Battambang has achieved these results, compared with other rapidly urbanising cities of Cambodia and Southeast Asia. Through the lens of urban sustainability transformations, our research identifies the capacity strengths and gaps of Battambang city in preparing for and initiating the city’s urban transformation of its waste sector, applying the transformative capacities framework of Wolfram (Cities 51:121-130, 2016). Through qualitative coding of semi-structured interviews and document analysis we found that (a) particular transformative capacities provided building blocks for the development of other capacities, (b) award and recognition processes can play a role in developing transformative capacities, and (c) that the city’s culture of innovation and relatively stable population and political-economy contributed to strengthening its capacities. This research contributes knowledge for policy and practice on urban transformative capacity strengthening, as it supports a phased ‘building blocks’ approach in resource-constrained contexts.

How can cities be more sustainable and just? This question has guided a process of synthesizing insights from previously funded research and innovation projects that deal with approaches tackling urban sustainability and justice. As part of this process, a database in the form of a knowledge commons was developed to gather 40+ approaches: sets of interventions, actions, strategies, solutions or policies that address urban sustainability and justice. This paper reflects on what we can learn from this database of approaches from an urban transitions perspective, both by sharing the method we used to develop the database and by analysing the content of those approaches and what research has revealed in relation to them. Not only do we introduce our methodology of co-creating the database (Section 2) we also present its outcomes in terms of the interlinkages between sustainable and just cities in the identified approaches (Section 3), their transformative potential (Section 4) and which institutional logics are involved (Section 5). We conclude that in addressing sustainability challenges in cities, tensions and contradictions emerge between ecological sustainability on the one hand and inclusivity, recognition and equity on the other (Section 6). Based on the identified approaches, we find that issues linked to justice are frequently glossed over, implicitly addressed, and instrumentalized in favour of ecological improvements or profitability which causes serious implications for future urban research and innovation. In order to address this gap, we present four recommendations for city-makers and city-thinkers across the globe to integrate sustainability and justice at the urban level.

Arts-based research offers an innovative approach to today’s social-ecological challenges. Many authors ascertain the transformative power of arts-based research lies in its ability to generate holistic and collaborative encounters which facilitate change. To advance critical discussions around arts-based research, the following article opens up pockets of success as well as the limitations and failures of the My Mabopane photovoice project. This project intended to support urban transformation in the City of Tshwane, South Africa, by asking participants to photograph and reflect upon a nearby green space afflicted with various social and environmental challenges. Results suggest alternative ways of knowing, which contribute to transformative learning, can link arts-based research to social-ecological transformation. However, despite this promising pathway, analyses also reveal realizing social-ecological transformation with arts-based research is no walk in the park. Rather problematic assumptions around knowledge and knowledge production, emerging in tensions between art and science, often trump the emancipatory intentions of photovoice. And broader structural challenges, that arts-based research situates itself in and against, pose a strong barrier for social-ecological transformation. In response to these barriers, this article argues for a collaborative arts-based research practice centering community realities on multiple scales via a merging of art, science, and life.

Entrepreneurship has emerged as a key element for experimentation and niche innovation in sustainability transitions. Yet, its contributions beyond this initial stage and the multi-pronged role that entrepreneurs can play in transformation processes remain elusive. In response, we conceptualize and empirically illustrate how entrepreneurs can contribute to innovations within firms and to city-wide processes of change. With insights from small- and medium-sized enterprises in European and North American cities, we develop a framework encompassing eight intervention types through which entrepreneurs shape urban sustainability transformations. We propose avenues for future research to better understand the distributed role of entrepreneurship and how it can contribute to shaping and accelerating change toward sustainability across integrated levels of urban transformations.