During the European Commission’s Open Days event JPI Urban Europe hosted a seminar around ‘Living Labs’ within the Open Days University: The OPEN DAYS University aims to present new research on regional and urban development. The seminar was organised by a joint effort of JPI Urban Europe and DG for Research and Innovation.
Experimental research approaches in an urban context
Simon Marvin – Professor at Durham University, the UK – gave a scientific introduction to urban complexity and experimental research approaches in an urban context. He explained that we experience an experimental laboratory turn in how we organize research and policy. This development is partly due to a response to a fragmented discourse on sustainability. At this moment, the concept of urban laboratories emerge as an approach to speed up socio-technological innovation involving stakeholders in co-production processes. But what will the implications of urban living labs be, for society and for research?
URB@Exp
René Kemp – Professor at Maastricht University, the Netherlands – presented a recently initiated project funded by the JPI Urban Europe: ’URB@Exp’. The three-year project involves the cities of Maastricht, Malmo, Graz and Leoben, and aims to generate knowledge on urban living labs as such. It concerns the motivation of urban living labs, the problems/challenges that are addressed by urban living labs, the successfulness of those experiments/projects and the impact may urban living labs have in a wider urban governance context.
Users and stakeholders as co-creators
Lena Goldkuhl – Researcher and project coordinator at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden – presented two urban living lab research projects from the very north of Sweden. Both projects systematically involve users and stakeholders as co-creators in innovation. According to Goldkuhl, this is a key feature of an urban living lab project.
Long term perspective
Expert commentator Olivier Coutard – Professor at CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research), Member of the JPI Urban Europe Scientific Advisory Board, France – emphasized the need for new types of research to meet new urban challenges. Urban living labs are particularly useful since the approach is trans – and interdisciplinary, experimental and open to discovery of new kinds of problems.
“The purpose of living labs should be to produce new knowledge as well as identifying new problems, not to solve well identified problems in specific cities and sites.”, said Coutard.
Because of the time required to achieve results in urban living labs, Coutard called for a long-term perspective – long living labs – in terms of funding continuity.
Co-creation & creativity
During the moderated discussion the audience raised questions on various issues. Moderator Inger Gustafsson – vice-chair of the JPI Urban Europe Governing Board, Head of Policy and Systems Development Department at VINNOVA, Sweden – concluded the seminar by asking the panellists if they have seen creativity being unleashed in the various projects they are involved in. Consensus was that bringing people together in co-creation activities often generates creativity, but the key creative dimension of urban living labs is that they bring about new, useful and unexpected knowledge.
Living labs for complex dynamics and processes
Expert commentator Olivier Coutard concluded that the key features of urban livings lab are the co-production of knowledge and the stakeholder involvement. As an experimental based research, living labs are suitable to explore highly complex dynamics and processes.
The OPEN DAYS event is co-organised by the European Commissions’ Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy and Committee of the Regions. It brings together policy makers and practitioners from local, regional, national and European level. labs are particularly useful since the approach is trans- and interdisciplinary, experimental and open to discovery of new kinds of problems.