Currently, planning is going through another paradigm shift, and it is becoming increasingly important for cities to design and implement low-carbon policies for sustainability, resilience and liveability. As urban challenges become more complex, innovative planning concepts and approaches emerge to promote systemic change through multi-dimensional planning.

This article reviews the current literature on sustainability transitions and low-carbon practices to discover how to implement them in planning regulations. The existing frameworks on transformative capacities could offer guidance in accelerating sustainable transitions in cities, so the operationalised Transformative Capacity Framework with its ten components is used to develop low-carbon activities and practices in planning.