The heterogeneity within developing cities calls for the implementation of different sanitation systems, adapted to each urban context and integrated under one institutional roof. This vision for sanitation planning is synthesised in the new book “Sustainable Urbanization”, in a chapter entitled "Towards Sustainable Sanitation in an Urbanising World": This new paradigm entails: (1) innovative management arrangements; (2) increased participation and the integration of individual, community and private sector initiatives; (3) thinking at scale to open new opportunities; (4) improved analysis of the situation and awareness raising. Moving beyond conventional approaches towards sustainable urbanisation needs to follow both a top‐down and a bottom‐up approach, with proper incentives and a variety of sanitation systems which, in a future perspective, will become part of the ‘urban ecosystem’.