Urban research for sustainability: developing a comparative transdisciplinary co-production approach to realise just cities

This paper engages with Manfred Max-Neef’s approach to transdisciplinarity in relation to an innovative international cross-city research program. Given the inadequacies of conventional methods, fundamentally different approaches are required to meet the ‘wicked problem’ challenges of transition towards sustainable societies. Mistra Urban Futures, a Swedish-based research centre with multi-institutional partnerships in eight cities on four continents, designed a co-produced comparative research program to address the realisation of just cities through a typology enabling the comparison of urgent local priorities. This paper reflects on the approach and its relevance to Max-Neef’s call for understanding as central to a transdisciplinary approach. Key findings include how understanding, together with the realisation of just cities, emerges intertwined as methodological outcomes. These outcomes also supported the processes, hence contributing to the discourses on transition and the methodologies of transdisciplinarity and comparative urban research