This presentation seeks to describe and discuss the possible role played by the urban designer professionals at the City of Casey in championing and delivering the Excellence Design program. As such in this role this paper proposes that they are agents of change and sustainable urban transition ‘intermediaries’. 

For urban transitions to accelerate, there is increasing recognition simultaneous transformative interventions toward sustainability are required at value, organisational and action level. Too often, urban studies scholars tend to focus on urban planning challenges and opportunities, thus dismissing the potential of applicative disciplines as new actors. This presentation proposes that within applicative disciplines that participate in the transformation of cities, the strategies of urbanism-urban design offer a more suitable platform than planning policies to address the challenges posed by the current crisis. I demonstrate this by presenting the recently documented role played by urbanist-urban designers in local government, when championing the Design Excellence Framework.