Sustainability discourse offers a plethora of perspectives on the type of change needed to ensure a just development within planetary boundaries, and how that change could come about. Calls for radical transformations nonetheless underline the need for examining prevalent discursive structures in society, including challenging the ‘ideology of growth’, in order to formulate new and transformative policy approaches. Based in empirical insights on how different actors – including grassroots, planners, officials and politicians – in Sweden perceive the transformations needed to reach sustainability goals, this paper explores how narratives of change reproduce, make use of or offer cracks in the eco-modern sustainability paradigm.