Insights from coproduced scenarios toward urban sustainability transformations

Abstract

Urban sustainability transformations call for fundamental shifts in how cities are organized, developed, and governed. Yet we need a better understanding of the diversity of visions and pathways that can enable transformative change. We address this gap through an analysis of 60 coproduced positive scenario visions and pathways developed using the Sustainable Future Scenario process, across nine US and Latin American cities participating in the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network. We engaged diverse urban stakeholders—including government, nonprofit, and private decision-makers, community leaders, residents, and academic collaborators—in more than 20 coproduction workshops to explore alternative urban futures of sustainability and resilience. We examined how the coproduced scenarios represent five domains of transformative change (nature–human relationships, economic transformation, governance, social and environmental justice, and infrastructure futures) and four theories of transformative change (structural/institutional, agency/power, goals of the system, and worldviews/values). Most pathways combined multiple theories of change operating across multiple domains, revealing urban transformations as entangled rather than singular interventions. Some strategies were common across cities—car-free regions, decentralized infrastructure, community-based governance, expanded fundamental rights—yet were pursued with different transformative aims, demonstrating how a strategy’s transformative intent depends on the theories of change behind it. These findings position coproduced scenarios as more than a normative or planning tool and offer an analytical approach for surfacing the possibility space of urban transformation.