The objective of this chapter is to more fully explore how urban environmental change takes place. The role and significance of economic development and normative planning efforts are explored. These conditions further help refine understanding of how different drivers and social and economic forces influence how cities both create and respond to the environmental crises and how transitions are manifested. Several different narratives of urban transitions are defined. These include urban transitions as sequence, collapse, advance, futures, and just sustainability. An integrated framework that links the different elements of urban environmental transitions is presented and discussed. The framework includes four steps – stress, crisis, transition, and transformation – with coupled components and elements such as drivers, spheres of action, and process and product outcomes. A review of the application areas and specific cases are presented as an introduction to the next section of the book.