During the last three decades, the countries of the developed world have been engulfed by the 'second demographic transition', which involves new family relations, less and later marriage, declining fertility rates, population ageing, postponement of child-bearing and smaller households, among other trends. It is being increasingly argued that such population dynamics are having a powerful transformative effect on the inner city, by diversifying and redensifying its social landscapes, and creating a 'splintered' urban form. Based on the findings of a recent EU Framework 5 research project, this paper investigates the demographic contingencies of this process-also known as reurbanisation-in four European cities: Leipzig (Germany), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Bologna (Italy) and Leon (Spain). Analyses of census and municipal registry data, as well as on-site questionnaire surveys and interviews, have revealed that the reviewed cities are being populated with, and fragmented by, multiple migration trends and new household structures connected to the second demographic transition.

Urbanization is a global trend, and consequently the quality of urban environments is increasingly important for human health and wellbeing. Urban life-style is typically associated with low physical activity and sometimes with high mental stress, both contributing to an increasing burden of diseases. Nature-based solutions that make effective use of ecosystem services, particularly of cultural ecosystem services (CES), can provide vital building blocks to address these challenges. This paper argues that, the salutogenic, i.e. health-promoting effects of CES have so far not been adequately recognised and deserve more explicit attention in order to enhance decision making around health and wellbeing in urban areas. However, a number of research challenges will need to be addressed to reveal the mechanisms, which underpin delivery of urban CES. These include: causal chains of supply and demand, equity, and equality of public health benefits promoted. Methodological challenges in quantifying these are discussed. The paper is highly relevant for policy makers within and beyond Europe, and also serves as a review for current researchers and as a roadmap to future short- and long-term research opportunities.

The evolving debate on ‘urban shrinkage’ mirrors an increasing interest in demographic phenomena on the part of urban scholars. This paper discusses ambiguous evidence about recent population decline in the large cities of Poland and the Czech Republic, with a particular focus on Łódz and Brno in general and their inner cities more specifically. By applying a mixed-method approach, the paper identifies indications of inner-city repopulation and socio-demographic diversification which are not yet apparent in register or census data. It is argued that there are indications of a silent transformation of traditional residential patterns and neighbourhoods in east central Europe. In the inner cities, this is reflected, amongst other things, by the presence of new households that may be called ‘transitory urbanites’.

This article evaluates if the increasing use of the term “urban transformations” in academic research and the widely acknowledged importance of cities in sustainability transformations has led to a transformative turn towards sustainability and Global Environmental Change (GEC) in urban-related studies. This is done through a systematic review of the scientific literature on urban transformations for the last six decades. This way, the multiplicity of uses of the term urban transformations is identified and a contextualization of the urban transformations to sustainability-debate within the wider sphere of urban-related studies is achieved. Our findings show that until now the term is very heterogeneously used in the scientific literature and that the number of articles referring to urban transformations to sustainability has significantly increased during the last five years. While first steps towards a transformative turn can be identified, empirical cases of successful urban transformations towards sustainability hardly appear in the articles. A gap between the theoretical concept and the empirical cases of urban transformations is clearly visible, which also has implications for future research on urban sustainability.

The paper presents the requirements and challenges of urban transitions towards sustainability from the perspective of the SAB of the JPI Urban Europe. Critical reflections on the achievements and identification of gaps in the activities of JPI Urban Europe, based on the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda SRIA (2015–2020), reveal advanced research questions, tasks, and approaches that influenced the development process of the SRIA 2.0 (released in February 2019). The authors emphasize the dilemma approach, the local context and the co-creation concept to pursue urban transitions in real-world context. Considering this frame, they propose specific domains for further research on urban transitions.