Organising for Social Sustainability in Urban Housing: Hitting the Target but Missing the Point

Abstract Social sustainability has become a widely known term, not least in the area of housing and urban development. While the literature has improved our understanding of the various meanings and interpretations of the concept, there is still a need for studies that explore processes of organising for social sustainability as processes of translation that can take into consideration several dimensions of translation, i.e. shifts in meaning, as well as agency and interests. This paper aims to address this issue-complex by exploring how social sustainability is conceived and translated into practice in urban renovation projects. The contribution of our analysis is that we show how resources within organizational theory and research can contribute to a more general understanding of how popular but vague concepts are or are not transformed into action and the implications of this.