Core Ingredient for Successful Urban Living Labs

Addressing complex urban challenges require innovative problem solving, including through co-creation of urban solution with Urban Living Labs (ULL). ULL function as meeting arenas to support communities’ diversity, significance and connectedness, where participants can experiment with practical ideas and solutions towards a more cohesive, inclusive and sustainable every-day life. ULL may include a wide range of topics, including social cohesion and innovation, urban governance, urban and rural renewal, cultural heritage, water management, e-participation, circular economy, mobility management and stakeholder involvement. 

A successful long-term urban living lab needs to include technical, spatial, social, economic, regulatory in order to be able to identify and address complex urban challenges. The core ingredients for a fruitful co-creation problem solving include:

• Contacts and cooperation with key local actors 
• A firm anchored principles to the local context and existing value chains, in particular actors with prior experiences of urban transformation
• Engage local stakeholders and stakeholder ecosystems, facilitate dialogue, build trust and credibility, support mutual understanding, gain public and government support, and secure involvement of local universities or research organisations

The specified keys create successful ULL as these actions build trust, cooperation and communication between stakeholders, especially local actors. It is also critical that ULL gain the support of local authority through the alignment with the policy and urban development strategy, as ULL that are not sufficiently anchored across several municipal decision makers and entities are vulnerable to political changes. It is also necessary for the ULL to make room for changes and further development to account for political, time-related or resource-related uncertainties.

Reference:

Wyckmans, A., Wang, Y., Korsnes, M., Aune, P., Yu, Y., Liu, C., Pasher, E., Harir, M., Sharir, L., Herzog, O. and Cao, B., 2021. Urban Living Labs as Instruments of Open Innovation: Examples of Sino–European Cooperation. In Towards Socially Integrative Cities (Vol. 8). MDPI, Basel

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