Urban Living Labs: how to enable inclusive transdisciplinary research?

Pia Laborgne,Wojciech Goszczynski,Joanna Suchomska,Jochen Wendel,Monika Heyder,Iulian Nichersu,Dragos Balaican,Epongue Ekille,Andrea Pierce,Krzysztof Ślebioda,Michał Wróblewski

doi:10.1186/s42854-021-00026-0

Abstract

The Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach has the potential to create enabling environments for social learning and to be a successful arena for innovative local collaboration in knowledge co-creation and experimentation in the context of research and practice in sustainability transitions. Nevertheless, complex issues such as the urban Food-Water-Energy (FWE) Nexus present a challenge to the realization of such ULL, especially regarding their inclusiveness.We present ULL as a frame for a local knowledge co-creation and participation approach based on the project "Creating Interfaces - Building capacity for integrated governance at the Food-Water-Energy-nexus in cities on the water". This project aims at making FWE Nexus linkages better understandable to the stakeholders (citizens and associations, city government, science, businesses), and to facilitate cooperation and knowledge exchange among them. This paper focuses on and discusses inclusiveness as a key aspect and challenge of ULLs and on what literature and our experiences in this regard suggest for the advancement of the concept of ULL towards ULL 2.0. These findings often also relate to framing transdisciplinary research in a wider sense.

Highlights

The Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach has the potential to createenabling environments for social learning and to be a successful arena for innovative local collaboration in knowledge co-creation and experimentation in the context of research and practice in sustainability transitions
Implementation phase While the overall thematic focus is generally defined in the design phase, during the implementation phase, all involved stakeholders should agree on needs, objectives, and methods (Beecroft et al, 2018) and ideally share a common mission and vision (Nevens et al, 2013)
As Jaeger-Erben et al (2018) conclude, transdisciplinary researchers face specific challenges and need capacity-building, e.g., regarding procedural problems related to different logics involved as well as for creating “appropriate interfaces around common aims and boundary objects” (Jaeger-Erben et al, 2018: 384)

Summary

Introduction

The Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach has the potential to createenabling environments for social learning and to be a successful arena for innovative local collaboration in knowledge co-creation and experimentation in the context of research and practice in sustainability transitions Complex issues such as the urban FoodWater-Energy (FWE) Nexus present a challenge to the realization of such ULL, especially regarding their inclusiveness. This paper focuses on and discusses inclusiveness as a key aspect and challenge of ULLs and on what literature and our experiences in this regard suggest for the advancement of the concept of ULL towards ULL 2.0 These findings often relate to framing transdisciplinary research in a wider sense. For the research process to engage and influence local policy, it is necessary to build a sense of ownership among local decision-makers and to shape a vision for change concerning the local system from the beginning of the process

Objectives

Methods

Conclusion