Smart City Innovation through Urban Living Labs

Smart Cities thrive where innovation is fully supported in the governance. Urban Living Labs (ULL) is one medium that can provide the supporting environment for innovation. Urban Living Labs uses co-creation or a process of value creation by sharing information, promotes iterative, nonlinear innovation processes. Co-creation involves multiple stakeholders to generate social innovation, in which the stakeholders themselves help (re)shape their environment and trigger change. 

ULL functions 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. The stakeholders involved may include the quadruple helix of public sectors, private entities, academia & research organisation, and the civil society. The involvement of local actors is critical because a successful ULL include decision processes that were based on a broad local knowledge and experience base, with solutions better adapted to local needs and priorities.

Dedicated workshops with local decision makers and stakeholders are needed to balance expert knowledge in urban development with in-depth learning of local priorities. In these workshops and discussions, the varying stakeholders can identify and aligning interests, merge on-site local knowledge with international best practices and create new learning across geographical and cultural boundaries.

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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