Cities must change rapidly to address a range of sustainability challenges. While urban experimentation has prospered as a framework for innovation, it has struggled to stimulate broader transformation. We offer a novel contribution to this debate by focusing on what municipalities learn from experimentation and how this drives organisational change. The practicalities of how municipalities learn and change has received relatively little attention, despite the recognised importance of learning within the literature on urban experiments and the central role of municipalities in enabling urban transformation. We address this research gap, drawing on four years of in-depth research coproduced with European municipal project coordinators responsible for designing and implementing the largest urban research and innovation projects ever undertaken. This cohort of professionals plays a critical role in urban experimentation and transformation, funnelling billions of Euros into trials of new solutions to urban challenges and coordinating large public-private partnerships to deliver them. For our respondents, learning how to experiment more effectively and embedding these lessons into their organisations was the most important outcome of these projects. We develop the novel concept of <em>process learning</em> to<em> </em>capture the importance of experimentation in driving organisational change. Process learning is significant because it offers a new way to understand the relationship between experimentation and urban transformation and should form the focus of innovation projects that seek to prompt broader urban transformation, rather than technical performance. We conclude by identifying implications for urban planning and innovation funding.

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Cities are at the centre of the debate to mitigate climate change. A considerable number of cities have already made commitments to sustainability transitions through the introduction and integration of green strategies. Moreover, in the past few years, Europe has witnessed an increase in the development of smart cities and advancement towards creating more sustainable cities. At the moment, an innovative concept in smart city development involves Positive Energy Districts (PEDs) that further encourage districts and cities to become carbon neutral. This paper looks at the five cities of Maia, Reykjavik, Kifissia, Kladno and Lviv that are a part of an ongoing H2020 project. The purpose of the paper was to understand the status quo of energy transition in these five cities as they embarked on the PEDs journey and identify associated challenges and benefits that PEDs brought to each city. The information was collected through a knowledge gap survey, City Vision 2050 workshop, discussions during the City Forum and individual interviews with city representatives. Cities across Europe and beyond may find themselves in a similar situation, and therefore, this paper also provides brief set of checkpoints to prepare new cities for the PED journey, thus enabling them to transition towards PEDs more efficiently.

Municipalities often struggle with reconstructions and refurbishing of buildings in public ownership. This is not only because of limited expert capacities that municipalities struggle with (municipal architect position or urban planner position is vacant, or non-existent etc.) or lack of finances. There is an increasing need and demand from municipalities for redefining buildings’ original purpose and finding new, sustainable and innovate functions. They have to decide not only how to reconstruct, but how to rethink its original purpose. The case study from a city of Slaný shows how participatory design can serve the goal of finding new functions of a public building and effectively contribute to the planning phase of reconstruction projects. Sustainable urban development should react to people’s needs, new technologies and environmental challenges. Reconstruction projects should reflect innovations in both technologies and approaches and respond to newly emerged functions. The methodology demonstrated in the case study can serve as a tool for assessing preferences of citizens, needs of the municipality and bridge the gap between politicians, experts and citizens by supporting efficient communication and evidence-based decision making. Moreover, this case shows how to ensure social sustainability and project effectiveness by involving multidisciplinary teams, in this case architects, urban planners, sociologists, communications experts and environmental and engineering psychologists.

This work provides an overview of psychology of aging and old age in the Czech Republic. Historical roots as well as recent activities are listed including clinical practice, cognitive rehabilitation, research, and the teaching of geropsychology.