Urban Laboratories: Experiments in Reworking Cities

Abstract

The notion of the ‘urban laboratory’ is increasingly striking a chord with actors involved in urban change. Is this term simply a metaphor for urban development or does it suggest urbanization by substantially different means? To answer this question, we review the work of science and technology studies (STS) scholars who have empirically investigated laboratories and practices of experimentation over the past three decades to understand the significance of these spaces of experimentation in urban contexts. Based on this overview of laboratory studies, we argue that urban laboratories and experimentation involve three key achievements — situatedness, change‐orientation and contingency — that are useful for evaluating and critiquing those practices that claim to be urban laboratories. We conclude by considering some future directions of research on urban laboratories.

Unpacking the Formation of Favourable Environments for Urban Experimentation: The Case of the Bristol Energy Scene

“…Around the 2000s, with the mainstreaming of climate change, municipal authorities sought to expand their capacities to deal with climate change and integrate it into other imperatives such as economic development and intercity competition, with the enabling mode of governing gained prominence in an era of 'strategic urbanism'. There is evidence that a new era of governing by experimentation is emerging, with actors explicitly framing their interventions in experimental terms or proactively seeking to create urban laboratories as dedicated spaces for experimentation [3,9]. Our study contributes to these discussions by examining an instance of this trend, interrogating how this mode of governing emerges as a viable option in a particular context and unpacking how it relates to other modes of governing.…”

“…Urban experiments are being mobilised not merely to study the city but also to probe diverse urban futures, harness innovations to transform the city and its various sociotechnical systems [4][5][6] and contribute to developing the capacities required for transformation [7]. Proponents of urban experimentation have devised and implemented a variety of experimental spaces, such as urban living laboratories, transition arenas, platforms, and experimental districts, which are the object of a thriving body of literature [8][9][10][11][12]. While the literature on urban experimentation has emphasised deliberate efforts to construct experimental spaces, the question of how a particular place or city becomes a favourable environment for experimentation with sustainability has hardly been asked.…”

Locating the fourth helix: Rethinking the role of civil society in developing smart learning cities

“…However, a more robust and socially driven environmental initiative would also include learning related to environmental rights and duties as a key factor in facilitating change. Successful smart cities have the potential to deliver benefits in social, environmental and economic terms -but by their design, which is often generic, abstract and shortterm, initiatives like the TSB's Future City Demonstrator have a high risk of failure (Karvonen and van Heur 2014).…”

“…Moreover, a technological vision is often a corporate one, and claims of digital transformation may be overstated considering the multitude of challenges faced by cities. Consequently, some researchers (Karvonen and van Heur 2014;Buck and White 2015) question the transformative nature of smart urbanism and its potential to facilitate meaningful change.…”

Intensifying or transforming sustainable cities? Fragmented logics of urban environmentalism

“…There has been an apparent unbundling into a more fragmented landscape of multiple and competing conceptions of the relations between cities and ecology, characterised as: urban resilience (Newman et al 2009, Gleeson 2014, urban carbon regulation (While et al 2010) and low carbon transitions (Bulkeley et al 2011), sustainable growth for cities, smart urbanism (Hollands 2008, Kitchin 2014, Marvin et al 2015, urban securitisation (Hodson and Marvin 2009, Davis 2010 and experimental cities as test-beds (Karvonen and Van Heur 2014) (this issue). The unbundling of sustainable cities' discourse into a set of competing environmental logics is being promoted through an epistemic politics (Andersen and Atkinson 2013) built on particular coalitions of international agencies, research funders and donors, academic research centres and professional groupings.…”