Along with climate change, population growth, and overexploitation of natural resources, urbanisation is among the major global challenges of our time. It is a nexus where many of the world’s grand challenges intersect, and thus key to sustainable development. The widespread understanding of urbanisation as a successive and unidirectional transformation of landscapes and societies from a rural to an urban state is increasingly questioned. Examples from around the globe show that ‘the rural’ and ‘the urban’ are not only highly interdependent, but actually coexist and often merge in the same space or livelihood strategy. Our concept ofrurbanityprovides an integrated theoretical framework which overcomes the rural–urban divide and can be operationalised for empirical research.Rurbanityis the next stringent step following the gradual widening of previous concepts from urban-centred approaches through the emphasis on urban peripheries to attempts of abolishing any distinction of a rural environment and acknowledging the highly dynamic nature of globalising urbanisation. Building on complex systems theory and assemblage thinking, our concept explores complementary aspects of the distinct epistemic worldviews dominating the natural and social sciences. Within this theoretical frame, we derive four analytical dimensions as entry points for empirical research:Endowments and Place,Flows and Connectivity,Institutions and Behaviour, andLifestyles and Livelihoods. Two examples illustrate how these dimensions apply, interact, and together lead to a comprehensive, insightful understanding ofrurbanphenomena. Such understanding can be an effective starting point for assessing potential contributions ofrurbanityto long-term global sustainability.