Urban transitions are long term structural transformation processes in complex urban systems. Over decades, the city itself can go through a transition (for example from industrial to service-based, from rural to urban, from unsustainable to sustainable). Such an urban transition is composed of different transitions at subsystem level (for example in mobility, energy, housing, consumption, or health-care). In going through such transitions, cities themselves are also part of broader regional, national systems for which they might form a place in which innovations and experiments take place. Cities are therefore prime examples of complex social systems (the objects of transition management); multiple problems converge at this level and are most visible; and local government is increasingly in a position to influence local/regional development.

In addition, cities are perhaps the best level of application of transition management: not only because of the multiple transitions occurring at this level and the concrete level of application, but also because of the close relationship between those participating in transition programs, transition arenas and transition experiments. People involved are not only professionals but also stakeholders: they are living in the city, raise children there or are otherwise also emotionally involved. This makes urban transition management a collective endeavor of people striving for sustainable development in their own environment. Urban transition management then is the search for ways to deal in a pro-active way with such semi-autonomous processes, guiding and accelerating social innovation while simultaneously developing new modes of governance and policy-making.