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In this chapter, we shed light on the question of how the different strands of UPE understand the ‘urban’: the traditional Marxist UPE as metabolic process shaped by power and the more recent postcolonial perspectives as pluralised socio–natures that act as arenas for the everyday political. The chapter concludes with a brief summary and a call for a Political Ecology across the urban/rural divide that could engage more systematically in the question where the urban is located, as well as which and how processes of production of socio–nature are specific to the urban.

This paper explores a global trend where universities are collaborating with government, industry and civil society to advance the sustainable transformation of a specific geographical area or societal sub-system. With empirical evidence, we argue that this function of 'co-creation for sustainability' could be interpreted as the seeds of an emerging, new mission for the university. We demonstrate that this still evolving mission differs significantly from the economic focus of the third mission and conventional technology transfer practices, which we argue, should be critically examined. After defining five channels through which a university can fulfil the emerging mission, we analyse two frontrunner 'transformative institutions' engaged in co-creating social, technical and environmental transformations in pursuit of materialising sustainable development in a specific city. This study seeks to add to the debate on the third mission and triple-helix partnerships. It does so by incorporating sustainable development and place-based co-creation with government, industry and civil society. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.