Community engagement enables target integration in SDG11 governance in Japan

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remain fragmented in practice and dominated by a top-down state–market governance, overlooking the roles of communities and the third sector. SDG11 provides a critical entry point for examining how global framings are translated into integrated local governance. This study employs an “actor–power–institution” framework to examine how different community engagement configurations shape target integration based on 228 SDG11 initiatives across 72 municipalities in Japan. We find that cross-target and cross-domain configurations are associated with wider actor enrollment, among which NPOs and social enterprises play significant roles. Higher cross-goal integration is associated with a higher level of participatory power, reflected in both agenda autonomy and decision authority. At the municipal level, the integration follows distinct pathways across municipalities with different administrative levels and industrial characteristics. Larger municipalities tend to facilitate strong engagement, yet it is often decoupled from integration, whereas smaller municipalities are more likely to translate engagement into high integration through advantaged engagement configurations and strategic alignment with local industry. The findings highlight the often-overlooked potential of smaller cities in advancing integrated governance, questioning scale-centric assumptions in sustainability governance, and imply urban–rural linkages as a key pathway.