BEYOND SUSTAINABILITY: REFRAMING URBAN MANAGEMENT THROUGH REGENERATIVE THINKING FOR RESILIENT AND INCLUSIVE NATION BUILDING

Cities have become central platforms for firm competitiveness, innovation and national development. Yet urban sustainability initiatives that improve efficiency and environmental performance do not necessarily enhance a city’s capacity to adapt to shocks, regenerate ecological systems or sustain inclusive economic activity. This gap prompts the present study. We argue regenerative urban management represents an adaptation-oriented extension of dominant sustainability approaches and emerges from the convergence of organised complexity, local knowledge, polycentric governance, adaptive resilience, agglomeration and global network theory. The review purposively selected foundational and highly cited contributions from sustainable urbanism, regenerative design, urban theory, resilience science, urban economics and institutional governance. Recurring constructs were coded and grouped into theoretically supported regenerative capabilities. The resultant integrated framework remains open for empirical validation for future researchers. The model captures the shift of the sustainability paradigm to the Regenerative Urban Management by synthesizing insights from six major theoretical traditions that collectively underpin regenerative urban management. These theoretical foundations collectively give rise to a set of shared regenerative principles, which constitute the core capabilities required for regenerative urban management, enabling cities to function as complex adaptive socio-ecological systems that learn, adapt, and renew continuously. The framework further asserts that regenerative urban management extends beyond environmental regeneration to generate broader economic and developmental outcomes. By fostering innovation, resilience, human capital development, and reducing transaction costs through collaborative governance and networked interactions, regenerative urban management strengthens local productive capacity and enhances firm competitiveness.