Urban Sustainability in the Making

This book explores how urban sustainability is negotiated and enacted through planning practices, narratives, and institutional change. It does so through the case of Aalborg, to illustrate transitions that are shaped by urgency, legitimation and implementation.

It offers a theoretically grounded and empirically nuanced account of how urban sustainability emerges through situated, negotiated, and contested processes of transition. The book provides critical insight into the governance arrangements, planning rationalities, and institutional innovations that shape sustainability in practice, with the city of Aalborg serving as a paradigmatic case. Drawing on four intersecting theoretical traditions – Urban Political Ecology, Just Sustainability, Phronetic Planning, and Urban Sustainability Governance – the book develops the Urban Sustainability Compass, an interpretive framework organised around the logics of urgency, legitimation, and implementation. Through longitudinal analysis, engagement with planning documents, and sustained collaboration with municipal practitioners, the book delivers conceptual depth and methodological guidance for scholars, planners, and policymakers aiming to understand and co-produce context-sensitive, just, and adaptive pathways toward sustainable urban futures. This book is intended for scholars, advanced graduate students, and critically engaged practitioners in the fields of urban planning, sustainability studies, human geography, and environmental governance. It will be of particular interest to those conducting research on urban transitions, planning theory, climate adaptation, and socio-ecological transformation. The volume is especially suited for postgraduate courses and seminars on sustainable urban development, strategic spatial planning, and critical approaches to environmental policy, governance, and justice.

Author Biography

Enza Lissandrello is Associate Professor at Aalborg University, Department of Sustainability and Planning, and a member of the Planning for Urban Sustainability (PLUS) research group. Her research explores the intersections of planning theory, governance, and participatory approaches to sustainable urban development, focusing on power, reflexivity, and socio-technical transitions. She integrates feminist theories of performativity, interpretive policy analysis, and innovative participatory methods such as gamification and co-creation. Co-editor of The New Normal in Planning, Governance and Participation (Springer, 2023), she has extensive international experience in Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, and France. Enza currently serves as Chair of the Urban Europe Research Alliance (UERA), advancing global collaboration on sustainable and climate-neutral cities.

Alessandra Badami is Full Professor of Urban Design at the University of Palermo, Department of Architecture. Her research combines theoretical and applied perspectives on sustainable urban development, with expertise in urban regeneration, cultural landscape management, and innovative design methodologies. She has advised regional and municipal administrations on urban and regional planning and contributes to advancing experimental approaches to urban image management, such as the Colour Plan of the Egadi Islands. Her recent publications address post-earthquake reconstruction in Gibellina, sustainable urban regeneration in Aalborg, and the management of historical agricultural landscapes in the Sicilian Anthropocene, linking heritage conservation with contemporary urban challenges.