The EmbedterLabs project will develop capacity for more synergistic urban planning for transformations towards sustainable and resilient urban areas. It deals with a key deficiency of current urban planning: the rather context-specific lessons of Urban Living Labs (ULLs) are poorly translated into citywide, integrated, transformative policy implications, leaving them having limited impact. To do so, it answers two questions: 1) how to orient labs and experiments to inform broader learning processes, and 2) how to align laboratory insights with established policy mixes to enable transformation? To achieve this, a novel approach will be developed, tested and refined through retrospective analysis of experiments in Gdansk, Stockholm and Maastricht followed by action research through ULL experiments in each city. The experiments will focus on mobility infrastructure and public space, one key dimension of urban sustainability. These activities will improve the learning processes of experiments and accordingly support the creation of transformative capacity for urban policy makers.

The consortium is well-positioned by including universities with complementary knowledge, cities committed to experiment and learn to transform, companies developing innovations, and organizations representing stakeholder interests. All research and city partners have experience with multi-actor Living Lab and participatory approaches, and concrete experiments are already identified.

Tentative results

Cities in Europe regularly do urban experiments, such as temporary pedestrian zones or other traffic measures. Often small-scale, temporary trials, usually with residents and other stakeholders, such as shops or NGO’s, they currently rarely lead to new policies and wider implementation.

EmbedterLabs has developed and tested a tool that supports the learning process during urban experiment, as well the transfer of lessons after an experiment. The tool helps actors to design a process that is based on common intended learning outcomes of both a site-specific and strategic nature that are more open-ended and reflexive questions about the innovation process.

The tool ensures that qualitative and quantitative data that answer the questions are collected, and based
on this data addresses (responds to or offers reflection on) learning outcomes and their policy implications. It also proposes methods to ensure the management and dissemination of the lessons learned.