The inevitable energy shift by 2050 presents us with a major challenge. Most major Flemish cities are already working on ambitious urban renewal projects, but making things more sustainable requires integrating circular principles. The city of Bruges is currently focusing on the district Magdalena Quarter as part of its climate-neutral 2050 strategy, as various stakeholders including private individuals, church councils, welfare organizations, and schools have already started to develop ambitious plans for the future at the level of their own organizations. In the context of this research, these plans are mapped using on-site observations and literature research. To align the ambitions of various stakeholders with the city’s policy plans, there is a need for a collective and coordinated approach, which requires not just administration, but cultural understanding and an alignment of goals. This paper aims to look at the urban transition, in particular religious heritage, in the Magdalena Quarter from the lens of the Laudato Si’. The change processes that generally occur at an urban level were already presented in a previous paper in the form of a Theory of Change (ToC), defining problems and strategic goals as outlined in the encyclical of Pope Francis, and mapping urban interventions in Ghent, Belgium. The ToC shows a number of possible outcomes (behavioural changes) as described by Pope Francis in his encyclical and that can be expected in the Ghent neighbourhoods that were studied. The result of the current research shows that the interventions of the various individual stakeholders, when viewed together in the urban context of the Magdalena district, resemble a living ecosystem. In addition to the dynamic synergy between stakeholders and the resulting adaptive growth potential of an ecosystem, a number of conflicts also arise, including overtourism and a negative trend of depopulation. These conflicts are largely due to the district’s high UNESCO heritage content. They demand the necessary attention if we want to speak of an affordable socio-environmental urban transition.