The need to incorporate aspects such as values, perceptions, and place-based considerations into urban sustainability frameworks and planning practices has been acknowledged widely. Nonetheless, frameworks and related assessments often fail to capture subjective information and incorporate different and particularly local points of view, although narrative methods can be a suitable option to deliver such information. The purpose of the study is to understand what actions are being taken by local actors to make their cities sustainable, and which elements give meaning to actions. A narrative analysis studied written and visual narratives from a total of 229 submissions to a global photo competition collecting photographs and related explanations from 111 participants. Findings show a diversity of local actions, with tree planting and cleaning being the dominant ones, mostly carried out in groups. Many actions are related to global sustainability discourses, particularly greening cities. Prominent abilities and skills linked to actions include raising environmental awareness and community engagement. Narratives were constructed either from a challenge- or a solution-oriented perspective, with the challenge-oriented one coming exclusively from Global South cities. The study also showed the potential of narrative methods to document and analyse local sustainability action. Further studies need to focus and expand on how sustainability is being operationalized, and on designing multi-scalar analyses that contrast global sustainability narratives with localized understandings.