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Urban densification remains a contentious issue, often hindered by preservationist attitudes and risk-averse governance. This study contrasts two planning approaches in Baden, Switzerland: the Oberstadt + project, which applied a data-driven, evidence-based framework to foster a 10-Minute-Neighbourhood, and the In-Depth Study Oberstadt, which prioritized minimal intervention and preservation. The comparative analysis is based on a mixed-methods approach combining spatial data modeling, scenario planning, iterative stakeholder consultations, and autoethnography. Our findings reveal that conventional planning paradigms often lack methodological rigor, leading to suboptimal outcomes. In contrast, scientifically substantiated urban design—incorporating traceable metrics, iterative stakeholder engagement, and verifiable long-term scenarios—enhances both sustainability and public acceptance. The research highlights how governance structures can either enable or obstruct transformative urban planning, and argues for a shift away from intuition-based decision-making towards a structured, participatory, and evidence-driven process. By challenging the timidity of municipal decision-makers and advocating for transparent, quantitative planning tools, this paper underscores the need for a paradigm shift in urban transformation. It calls for city administrations and experts to embrace verifiable, inclusive design methodologies to reconcile urban growth with sustainability imperatives.

The genesis of the historical core of the city of Split, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, rests on the continuity of urban life. The city has been subject to constant change over the course of almost two millennia, transforming from an ancient imperial palace into today’s city. The ever-changing urban landscape implies the need for a continual dialogue between old and new, especially considering the efforts made throughout history to develop a new image of the city. By analysing three examples—Milesi Palace from the Baroque period, Bajamonti Palace from the age of Classicism, and Nakić Palace from the Secession period, all national heritage listed buildings, the significance of the urban logic behind their construction, as well as the impact these buildings had on the image of the city, is established. All three buildings are located on the perimeter of the city’s public zone, and in different periods, they established new sets of urban rules, which they hold to this day. By researching their influence on the formation of Split’s urban tissue on their immediate and wider surroundings, their role in the city-building process is defined, thus revealing their impact on the formation of the urbanscape, as well as the relationships between architectural heritage and the city’s transformation.

This article defines the key parameters of ‘state entrepreneurialism’ as a governance form that combines planning centrality and market instruments, and interprets how these two seemingly contradictory tendencies are made coherent in the political economic structures of post-reform China. Through examining urban regeneration programmes (in particular ‘three olds regeneration’, sanjiu gaizao), the development of suburban new towns and the reconstruction of the countryside, the article details institutional configurations that make the Chinese case different from a neoliberal growth machine. The contradiction of these tendencies gives room to urban residents and migrants to develop their agencies and their own spaces, and creates informalities in Chinese urban transformation. 本文定义了“政府企业家主义”作为一种将集中规划与市场手段相结合的治理形式有哪些关键参数，并诠释了这两种看起来相互矛盾的倾向在改革开放后中国的政治经济结构中是如何融汇的。通过考察城市再生计划（尤其是“三旧改造”）、郊区新城的开发和乡村重建，本文详细剖析了使中国的情况与新自由主义增长机器不同的制度格局。这两种倾向的矛盾性使城市居民和移民发展了能动性和自身空间，并造就了中国城市转型中的非正规性。

In Hungary, after the regime change in 1989, one of the most important institutional changes concerning suburbanisation was the high sovereignty of local authorities, albeit without appropriate funding for sovereign operation. This type of local sovereignty made mezzo-level planning and cooperation of independent municipalities ineffective. The inherent systemic political corruption of the rapid post-socialist privatisation hindered spontaneous cooperation as well. As a result, suburban infrastructure, even in municipalities with high-status residents, remained underdeveloped (from traffic connections through waste management to water provision). Our research field, Telki, was successful in selling land because its scenic location and the absence of industrial and commercial activities made it attractive for high-status suburban settlers. These newcomers were not interested in the further functional development of the village, and, as they took local political power, they successfully restricted economic and functional development. Consequently, selling land and introducing property taxes remained the most important source of income. The colonisation of the village by newcomers also meant the displacement of lower status original villagers and, today, mostly high-status families with young children feel at home in Telki. Others feel excluded not only because of real estate prices but also by the lack of appropriate functions or simply by the narrow concept of an appropriate lifestyle in the village defined by local power. The consequence of a complete lack of cooperation and rational planning is not only social injustice, elite segregation, and environmental harm, but also the reduced economic and housing potential of the Budapest agglomeration.

Urban transformations form a central challenge for enabling global pathways towards sustainability and resilience. However, it remains unclear what kind of capacity is needed to deliver urban change that is actually transformative. Against a backdrop of current claims and efforts to achieve urban transformations, this special issue reviews the relational concept of urban transformative capacity and how it can inform novel approaches in research, policy, and practice. Drawing on seven papers analyzing diverse empirical contexts, we identify four requirements that should guide future action: (1) foster inclusion and empowerment as prerequisites, (2) close the intermediation gap and strengthen the role of local academia, (3) challenge and reinvent urban planning as a key arena, and (4) enhance reflexivity through novel self-assessment techniques. Overall, current levels of urban transformative capacity are assessed as very low, making its development a high-priority objective for all stakeholders, but for planning and research policy in particular.

In 1992 the cities of Barcelona and Genoa both began their recent transformation journey, the former with the Olympics and the latter with the Colombians. While the former capitalised on its transformations, beginning an extensive path of both public and private investments, the latter focused on processes related to major events, happenings or funding (G8, Genoa Capital of Culture, Morandi Viaduct collapse, the national resilience and recovery plan (NRRP), etc.). It is interesting to note that, to date, in both cities, citizen participation or activation largely depends on how much the city seeks consensus on transformation operations more than on design choices by adopting a top-down approach, which is similarly configured in all large and medium-sized European cities. They hardly give space or importance to bottom-up processes except when synergistic to an already planned strategy.

Wir müssen alle mal nach Hause fahren: sei es nach der Arbeit, nach Freizeit- und Kulturaktivitäten oder nachdem wir die Kinder vom Sportverein abgeholt haben. Wenn der Wohnort am Stadtrand ist oder gar im ländlichen Raum - und Arbeit, Freizeit etc. im Kern einer Metropole -, dann begreifen wir diesen Weg als Pendelbeziehung. Diese findet gegenwärtig mal mehr, mal weniger klimaschonend statt; Transformation hin zu einer klimaangepassten Gesellschaft daher als Abkehr vom (Verbrenner-)Auto als primärem Modus des Pendelns zu begreifen ist das eine - sich den Orten zu widmen, wo beim Pendeln der Verkehrsmodus gewechselt wird, das andere. Darauf fokussiert dieser Essay.We all have to drive home at some point: whether it is after work, leisure, and cultural activities, or after picking up the children from their sports club. If we live on the outskirts of a city or even in a rural area - and work, leisure, etc. are in the centre of a metropolis - then we see this journey as commuting. At present, this takes place in ways that are sometimes more and sometimes less climate-friendly. Understanding the transformation towards a climate-adapted society as a move away from the (combustion engine) car as the primary mode of commuting is one thing - focusing on the places where the mode of transport is changed during commuting is another. This essay focuses on the latter.

There is a consensus about the strategic importance of cities and urban areas for achieving a global transformation towards sustainability. While there is mounting interest in the types of qualities that increase the capacity of urban systems to attain deep transformations, empirical evidence about the extent to which existing institutional and material systems exhibit transformative capacity is lacking. This paper thereby seeks to determine the extent to which sustainability initiatives led by local governments and their partners reflect the various components that the literature claims can influence the emergence of transformative capacity as a systemic property of urban settings. Using an evaluative framework consisting of ten components of transformative capacity and associated indicators, the specific objective is to identify patterns in these initiatives regarding the presence of individual components of transformative capacity and their interrelations with other components. The analysis of 400 sustainability initiatives reveals thin evidence of transformative capacity. When detected, evidence of transformative capacity tended to emerge in relation to wider processes of institutional-and social-learning and initiatives that linked outcomes to a city-wide vision of planning and development. However, instances of such initiatives were rare. This widespread lack of evidence for transformative capacity raises concerns that this set of attributes normalised in the literature is in fact rarely found in sustainability action on the ground.

The 2010s have witnessed a growing body of literature on urban transformation and industrial restructuring in the global south, particularly China. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the interplay between the parallel processes in the transition of globalisation. The existing literature on urban transformation and industrial restructuring in China has focused on the analysis of internal dynamics at the national level, whereas the evolution of the lower levels of urban and rural settlements (i.e. towns and villages) in the changing dynamics of globalisation has not been thoroughly discussed. Drawing on the evolutionary notion of ‘strategic coupling’ from Global Production Network (GPN) theory, this study attempts to highlight connections between urban transformation and industrial restructuring in China. Particular attention is paid to the ongoing industrial upgrading, relocation and transformation that started in the mid-2000s, and the subsequent effects on the prevalent foreign direct investment (FDI)-induced exo(genous)-urbanisation in the Pearl River Delta (PRD). Drawing on years of extensive field investigation, particularly indepth interviews with entrepreneurs, officials, migrants and villagers in representative towns in Dongguan, the current study argues that exo-urbanisation has undergone a paradigm shift and uneven patterns of transformation. Some towns (e.g. Humen and Chang’an) have witnessed stagnation due to the deliberate decoupling of low-skilled migrant labour and labour-intensive firms, whereas others (e.g. Songshanhu) have developed into high-tech zones driven by the strategic recoupling of technology-based domestic firms and a high-skilled workforce. This study sheds light on new avenues for future research on industrial restructuring and urban transformation amidst the changing global–local dynamics. 2010年代见证了越来越多关于全球南方、特别是中国城市转型和产业结构调整的文献。然而，全球化转型中平行进程之间的相互作用没有得到足够的重视。关于中国城市转型和产业结构调整的现有文献侧重于分析国家一级的内部动态，而较低层次的城乡住区（即城镇和村庄）在不断变化的全球化动态中的演变尚未得到充分讨论。借鉴全球生产网络(GPN)理论中“战略耦合”的进化概念，本研究试图强调中国城市转型与产业结构调整之间的联系。我们特别关注始于2000年代中期的持续产业升级、迁移和转型，以及随后这对珠江三角洲普遍的外国直接投资诱发的外来城市化的影响。根据多年的广泛实地调查，特别是对东莞代表性城镇的企业家、官员、移民和村民的深入访谈，本研究认为，外部城市化经历了范式转变和不均衡的转型模式。一些城镇（如虎门和长安）由于低技能移徙劳工和劳动密集型企业的故意脱钩而出现停滞，而另一些城镇（如松山湖）则在国内技术型企业和高技能劳动力的战略性回报的推动下发展成为高科技区。本研究为未来在不断变化的全球-地方动态中的产业结构调整和城市转型研究提供了新的途径。

There have been two types of scholarly discussion on city branding. On the one hand, city branding has been conceptualised as a differentiation strategy of entrepreneurial cities involved in interspatial competition. On the other hand, researchers have recently emphasised the need to pay attention to increasingly pervasive and transformative forms of city branding, including branding as an urban policy and a form of planning. Drawing on a case study carried out in Helsinki, Finland, this article connects these two approaches by analysing Helsinki’s recent city branding endeavour in the context of the qualitative transformation of the entrepreneurial city. The article shows how city branding highlights and constitutes the city as an entrepreneurial platform and enabler bound up by the extended entrepreneurialisation of society. 关于城市品牌化有两种学术讨论。一方面，城市品牌化曾被概念化为参与空间竞争的创 业型城市的差异化战略。另一方面，研宄人员最近强调需要关注日益宽泛和具有转型作 用的城市品牌化形式，包括被作为城市政策和规划形式的品牌化。本文以芬兰赫尔辛基 的案例研宄为基础，在赫尔辛基作为创业型城市质的转变的背景下分析其最近的城市品 牌化努力，从而将这两种方法联系起来。本文展示了城市品牌化如何凸显并构建了城市 作为一个创业平台和赋能者的功能，而这又是由整个社会的普遍创业化决定和促成的。