The terms 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development' are omnipresent in academic and policy discourse in a wide range of areas – including urban planning – yet there is rarely agreement on their concrete meanings and implications. A classic distinction is between conceptions founded on reformist ideas of “ecological modernisation” and those calling for more fundamental structural and system-wide transformations. Critics highlighting the presumed planetary boundaries and advocating approaches such as that of Planetary Wellbeing blame sustainable development for its excessive anthropocentrism, economism and even techno-optimism.

Much greater consensus prevails over the notion that sustainability and sustainable development require transdisciplinarity, that is, collaboration not only amongst experts but also between the academia, policymakers, business, and civil society. To succeed, transdisciplinary requires shared concepts and common ground that could be generated, for example, through collaborative small-scale projects. Projects and experiments at local level are more likely than debates on general concepts to foster the needed dialogue and agreement on shared meanings and objectives. Transdisciplinarity can be hampered by the lack of willingness or ability of experts to leave their comfort zone and engage in dialogue and collaboration disciplines from outside their own field. However, it can also reflect the absence of shared arenas for interaction (e.g., co-working spaces) or time for trans- and interdisciplinary dialogue and action.

This session seeks to contribute to transdisciplinary dialogue and action by bringing together experts and practitioners from diverse disciplines and areas of practice. To provide a basis for and stimulate discussion, the session draws on lessons from the ongoing EU-funded research project, ECF4CLIM, designed to generate a European competence framework for sustainability in education. Three main sources of information used within ECF4CLIM were upon to prepare the session: 1) the interactive transdisciplinary webinars organised in November and December 2022 for education-sector academics and practitioners from various academic and professional backgrounds; 2) periodic reflections by the research team on their experiences of transdisciplinarity in the project activities (e.g., diaries, notes on the conversations and group work sessions at the major project meetings), and 3) survey of literature concerning the practical experience of transdisciplinarity in European research projects.

A brief summary of the key findings, together with a handful of guiding questions tailored to the needs and interests of urban sustainability, will be presented to the participants at the opening of the session. Innovative methods, including visualisation, will be used to stimulate creativity, dialogue and "thinking out of the box".

Our session will allow the identification and further understanding of drivers and barriers for transdisciplinary work (the most efficient to support public policies) in urban planning research and practice. We aim to contribute to transdisciplinary dialogue and action in urban planning by bringing together experts and practitioners from diverse disciplines and areas of practice