Experimentation labs

Urban experimentation labs are place-based social experiments that test ideas, methods and technologies from different domains in order to better address specific (and complex) urban challenges in a contextualised manner. Experimentation Labs can vary in scope, scale and longevity. These processes all resemble, in one way or another, co-design workshops taking place in real time and in situ. The degree of experimentation, diversity of stakeholders and innovativeness of ideas brought to the fore, all vary to significant extents.

General introduction to approach

Experimentation labs, in general, constitute new and unconventional ways of participation in urban spaces. Research on urban labs shows that there is still much opaqueness on what constitutes an urban (living, smart, innovation) lab, and what does not. While initially they mainly have included businesses, entrepreneurs and researchers along with city authorities, they also increasingly aim at including citizens at all stages (research, development, testing implementation). Experimentation labs thus can be considered part of multiple stakeholders partnerships processes and knowledge brokerage (co-learning), but they are mostly ephemeral and not always binding in terms of policy outcomes. However, this co-creation aspect is challenging to achieve in practice, especially when projects aim at developing highly technological innovations, often pursued in the search for smart and sustainable cities.

Shapes, sizes and applications

Experimentation labs are very common in urban settings, and we have observed various types being applied to questions of urban sustainability. Depending on their focus and function they can be found under “Living Labs”, “Action Labs” and “Innovation Labs”, or “Smart (Urban) Labs” or simply “City Labs”. The main idea in most of these remains the co-creation and exploration of emerging ideas, breakthrough scenarios, innovative concepts and related products. Living Labs focus on the idea of an experiential environment where policy makers and users/citizens design, explore, experience and refine new policies and regulations in real-life scenarios for evaluating their potential impacts before their implementations, in relation, for example, to learning and collaboration in the development of the city (as in the case of the Eindhoven Living Lab collection of initiatives, TRANSIT project ), Nature-based Solutions (UNALAB , CLEVER Cities), or more generally transitions to sustainability (GUST ). Specific thematic labs might focus on a concrete (while also multi-dimensional) aspect of sustainability policy, like mobility (Cities4people <https://cities4people.eu/</ref>), or energy and mobility (Smart Urban Labs - TRANSFORM ). Experimentation labs emerged nearly a decade ago, as a way of innovating in cities with technology and people, and the research conducted to study and proliferate them has followed soon after. They are mushrooming rapidly across the globe and seem to have captured an important part of the discourse around future city governance. However, they are limited in how they include questions of culture and conflict, and struggle with how to include people’s voices beyond data entries or one-off or tokenistic participation structures.