From a climate change perspective, the governance of natural common-pool resources—the commons—is a key point in the challenge of transitioning to sustainability. This paper presents the main strategic advances of the São Paulo Urban Living Laboratory (ULL) regarding Food, Energy and Water (FEW Nexus) analysis and modelling at the border of a high biodiverse forest in a peri-urban region in southeast Brazil. It is a replicable and scalable method concerning FEW governance. The FEW Nexus is an analytical guide to actions that will enable a colossal set of innovative processes that the transition to sustainability presupposes. Sustainable governance of the FEW dimensions, seen as an innovation-based process, is approached by a decision making tool to understand the past and future dynamics of the system. The governance framework is based on a multi-criteria and multi-attribute set of sustainability-relevant factors used as indicators to model complex system dynamics (SD) and the stakeholders’ future expectations through a Delphi approach. Based on the three main dimensions of the Ecosystem Services Approach—Physical and Material Conditions, Attributes of Communities, and Rules-in-Use—the tool comprises thirteen specific sustainability indicators such as water and carbon footprints, land use social development, payment for ecosystem services, and land use gain indices. Its development was designed to generate a long-term network of socioenvironmental stakeholders’ decision making processes and collective learning about a higher level of sustainable systems. System Dynamics modelling demonstrates the associations between sustainability indicators and the impacts of payment for ecosystem services on the land use social development index, or on the trophic state index. The Delphi foresight approach, using the Promethee-Gaia method, allows us to understand the positions of multiple agents regarding the transition process. In this context, decision making tools can be very useful and effective in answering the “how to” questions of ULLs and paving the way for transition, providing collective planning and decision support frameworks for sustainability transition management.

Achieving societal impact, as opposed to academic impact, is a growing area of focus for the research community globally. Central to this changing mission is the focus on multiple interconnected complex systems and the need for research that is not just interdisciplinary, but also transdisciplinary and grounded in stakeholder co-production. This document compares multiple approaches to impact planning and evaluation across four newly formed urban living labs in Sao Paolo (Brazil), Western Cape (South Africa), Bristol (UK) and Rotterdam (Netherlands), each of which sought to address societal issues linked to the food-energy-water nexus. A comparison matrix and a disaggregated impact table are derived from a comprehensive review of key definitions. These new tools were completed by each ULL alongside a post hoc pathway to impact statements. Comparisons are presented and discussed, the strengths and weaknesses of this approach are considered and opportunities for improvement in societal impact planning and evaluation are provided. Our main findings include the importance of establishing clear shared definitions while accepting plural understandings, the need to acknowledge resource as a critical factor in impact delivery and the headline need for far greater focus in this area from both funders and research groups.

Urban living laboratories: Opportunities for modelling sustainability transitions: Here, a group of academics present Urban Living Laboratories to study sustainable food production systems, using systems dynamic modelling to analyse policy alternatives. Urban Living Laboratories (ULLs) have shown first promising signs of being valuable platforms for understanding transition phenomena. To address our time’s diverse grand societal challenges (like climate change and biodiversity loss), we must transition to truly sustainable systems, possibly the most significant shift facing modern civilisations. Such transitions involve coupled technological, social, economic and environmental shifts and demand transformative approaches with new forms of organisation and management.