Australia’s housing affordability crisis, rising cost-of-living pressures, and the need for rapid emissions reduction are typically addressed as separate policy challenges. This keynote argues that they are structurally interconnected and can be more effectively addressed through an industrial ecology perspective on urban provision systems, particularly housing and mobility. Drawing on urban metabolism and sustainability transitions research, cities are conceptualised as socio-material systems in which infrastructure stocks, material flows, and institutional arrangements co-evolve to shape resource use, environmental impacts, and access to services. Evidence from Australian cities shows that prevailing development patterns, including low-density expansion, car dependence, and housing systems shaped by speculative investment, lock in high material throughput, infrastructure costs, and emissions, while reinforcing housing cost escalation and unequal access. The keynote positions circular economy strategies as system-level interventions within these provision systems. In the Australian context, this includes material-efficient construction and retrofit, intensified use and adaptive reuse of existing building stock, and coordinated investment in public and shared mobility. Such approaches can reduce demand for primary materials, lower lifecycle costs, and improve productivity across the built environment sector. A sustainability transitions perspective highlights that these changes depend on shifts in governance, investment, and ownership structures. Public investment in social and affordable housing, alongside cooperative and community ownership models, can decouple access to housing from asset price inflation, while expanded mobility services reduce household costs and emissions. The keynote concludes by outlining implications for Australian policy and research, including integrated material–energy–service indicators, system-level modelling, and governance frameworks capable of coordinating long-term transitions. Positioning housing and mobility as core provision systems provides a basis for aligning affordability, productivity, and environmental sustainability in urban transitions.