Barriers to the Adoption of Urban Living Labs for NBS Implementation: A Systemic Perspective

Abstract

Urban Living Labs (ULLs) are widely believed to provide a safe environment for experimentation, co-creation and evaluation of innovations in real-life settings. A growing number of cities have been adopting ULLs to co-create and test Nature-Based Solutions (NBS). However, many of these cities have been facing major barriers in trying to adopt the ULL approach for implementing NBS. In this study, we seek to identify these barriers and provide a systemic understanding. Barriers are identified by means of workshops and interviews. Subsequently, interpretive structural modelling serves to identify the interdependencies among the barriers, resulting in a structural model of barriers in adopting ULLs for NBS. Our results show that political and institutional barriers are significantly limiting the adoption of ULLs. Moreover, knowledge brokers and other intermediaries, as well as cross-sectoral collaboration, play a key role in getting ULLs adopted. The findings from this study can help cities to develop strategies that overcome the main barriers for ULL adoption in the context of nature-based solutions.

Negotiating Complexity: Challenges to Implementing Community-Led Nature-Based Solutions in England Pre- and Post-COVID-19

“…The lack of consistent terminology to describe the field is also identified as a knowledge challenge when promoting nature-based interventions and programmes [ 72 , 73 ]. Another related obstacle is path dependency [ 74 ], defined as past experience with a controlling influence on current decision-making [ 75 ], e.g., reluctance to implement NbS projects due to lack of relevant experience [ 76 ], negative experiences or fear of failure [ 77 , 78 ].…”

“…Finally, lack of specific knowledge and relevant experience in implementing NbS and GSP among some NbS providers, e.g., in relation to mental health, horticulture, safe use of equipment, as well as skills in writing successful funding bids, are also challenges identified in this study. When local organisations face issues beyond their capacity and are unable to deal with them, the negative experiences may cause them to be wary of participating next time; referred to as path dependency in previous research [ 75 , 77 , 78 ].…”

“…However, the aforementioned lack of awareness of the benefits of NbS leads to a political barrier: a lack of sense of urgency in implementing NbS among policy-makers [ 77 , 82 , 83 ]. Together with competing priorities between policies [ 76 , 84 ], lack of political will and long-term commitment also become notable political barriers resulting in a lack of supportive legal and policy frameworks [ 67 , 69 , 78 , 83 ]. Gaps between government policy and practice are also highlighted, making it difficult for local actors to implement projects [ 68 , 69 ].…”

The Nature-Based Solutions Case-Based System: A Hybrid Expert System

“…They tested the NBS-CBS considering specific target cases in the city of Eindhoven. Eindhoven has been one of the pioneering cities in adopting NBS (Costa et al, 2021) and has participated in an EU project that develops demonstration areas for NBS (Sarabi et al, 2021).…”

“…Some of the key barriers are major uncertainties regarding the performance and implementation of NBS (Sarabi et al, 2020), lack of systemic and comprehensive analysis of NBS implementation experiences (Grace et al, 2021), and sectoral silos in decision-making organizations (Kabisch et al, 2016;Sarabi et al, 2019). Accordingly, the lack of opportunities to access the extant body of knowledge about NBS appears to limit the adoption of NBS in urban settings (Sarabi et al, 2020(Sarabi et al, , 2021.…”