Abstract
Real-world laboratories have gained substantially in importance as a format in sustainability and transformation research in recent years in Germany. This increase in significance is associated with the expectation of fostering and experimentally investigating transformations towards sustainability under real-world conditions in a bid to gain knowledge of their dynamics, to identify characteristics of successful transformation processes, and to be able to transfer this knowledge to other cases. Real-world laboratories are usually managed by a scientific partner, enabling use to be made of established procedures and methods in areas such as knowledge integration. Where responsibility for coordinating real-world laboratories lies with practitioner stakeholders, there is promising potential for their deployment. However, it also gives rise to situations, processes and challenges that are new to all parties involved and that have yet to be explored. In principle, experimental approaches that are characteristic of real-world laboratories are not new in the field of sustainable land management and spatial development. However, they are not traditionally alluded to as the real-world laboratory format. The two desiderata above provide the starting point for the present article. The aim of this article is to classify and reflect on the possibilities generated by real-world laboratories that have been initiated by practitioner stakeholders. A prime example of such real-world laboratories are those developed by Energieavantgarde Anhalt. This registered association wishes to contribute to sustainable land management in the context of the energy transition in rural areas, featuring small and medium-sized towns. A comparative analysis of these real-world laboratories is conducted using core characteristics from the scientific debate on real-world laboratories. As a result, the insight gained from this analysis can be used for future development and research.
Highlights
Real-world laboratories are gaining importance in the field of sustainable land management and spatial development
In Germany, the discussion on these innovative formats was primarily triggered by the flagship report by the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) “World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability” (WBGU 2011)
In order to shed light on what characterises real-world laboratories that have been initiated and largely shaped by practitioner stakeholders, we refer below to the core characteristics listed by Parodi et al (2016): research orientation, normativity, transdisciplinarity, transformativity, civil society orientation/participation, long-term nature and laboratory character
Summary
Real-world laboratories are gaining importance in the field of sustainable land management and spatial development (see, for example, Augenstein et al 2016; Hahne and Kegler 2016). Since there is no ready guidance on how to meet these challenges and since a wide range of individual issues need to be resolved, the association calls this largescale regional experiment the “Anhalt Real-World Laboratory” (www.energieavant garde.de) In this laboratory, partners engaged as practitioners in the region and scientists join forces to design a variety of sub-laboratories and experimental setups. Urban laboratories are site-specific participatory and communication platforms that map ongoing local transformation processes and enable broad participation They provide the experimental basis for developing, negotiating and implementing into urban design solutions for the use of secondary resources in urban spaces in cooperation with the population, companies and the administration. A multiple dwelling demolition area characterised by industrial housing construction as well as demographic and socio-economic challenges (neighbourhood type—industrial prefabricated large housing estate: “Wohnkomplex 4/4” urban laboratory)
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