Understanding successful community planning and transparently monitoring the process through indicators is essential for empowering communities to move towards a sustainable future. This paper investigates two key categories of indicators: 1) socio-ecological indicators and 2) process indicators. The Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, the foundation of this research, offers a science-based and principled definition of sustainability, as well as a method for structuring, evaluating and informing the design of indicators. A universally applicable set of community planning process indicators has been devised through ‘backcasting’. First, a list of Success Criteria for an ideal sustainable community planning process was developed. To determine the gaps that require monitoring, general practices in current planning were next assessed against this vision of success. Indicators were then brainstormed to measure closure of the highlighted gaps and movement towards success. Finally, these indicators were evaluated against a comprehensive list of ideal indicator characteristics. In summary, applying whole systems and strategic approaches to identifying and designing indicators can be relevant in any context. Process indicators provide the structure in which to monitor planning at every level and across disciplines so that appropriate socio-ecological indicators can then be derived, while simultaneously ensuring more effective governance.