Learning for change: experimentation and the co-production of knowledge in urban labs
This session, co-organised by Philip Marcel Karré (Kenniswerkplaats Leefbare Wijken) and Timo von Wirth (DRIFT), turned out to be a lucky, organizational co-incidence: due to too many applications, some session proposals were merged, including this one which now addressed ‘living labs’ and ‘knowledge labs’ under the common theme of ‘urban labs’.
The session was kicked off by Timo von Wirth who shared results of the large research project GUST on the Governance of Urban Sustainability Transitions. Besides elaborating on different processes (or strategies) for diffusion and transformation that living labs can engage in, including embedding, translating or replicating, and scaling, he offered critical reflections on ‘LabWashing’: radical ideas around which stakeholders gather and engage in experimentation may lose their transformative capacity when the mainstream becomes involved – a process also discussed in the TRANSIT project as the dialectic relation between transformation and capture. Research findings on the different institutional set-up of living labs were illustratively complemented by Derk Loorbach (DRIFT) who revealed his ‘practitioner alter-ego’ by sharing the history of the BlueCity, a living lab on circular economy practices and our conference venue. Seated underneath a set of lamps from re-cycled plastic and next to an exhibition of up-cycled products, the audience listed to the entertaining story of how the BlueCity came into being (in short: the unexpected happened not least because a philanthropist committed to turning experimenting idealists into entrepreneurial change-makers).
Next, Philip Marcel Karré explained the rationale behind seven knowledge labs that were formed in Rotterdam in 2012 based on a collaboration between Rotterdam municipality and several higher education institutions. Their goal is to develop practicable strategies to address wicked urban challenges, including public health, quality of life, social cohesion or poverty. Next to the giant task of addressing persistent, interrelated and complex problems, the collaboration between policy-makers and researchers poses some challenges.
Researchers may lack a ‘political antenna’ to communicate effectively or they may struggle with developing concrete suggestions in a short time-frame. Policy-makers, in contrast, may become frustrated with researchers who try to make decisions for them. Moreover, both groups work in different communities and are part of different systems – including performance assessment according to different indicators (NB: the betterment of actual problems not being one of them). Wim van der Zanden, researcher at Rotterdam municipality, made clear how knowledge has become a valuable currency with over 50 people working for Rotterdam municipality to derive useful information from data. The question how to navigate the ‘information cloud’ has become central to decision-making. Wim seeks to provide a radar and a compass by delivering courses to policy-makers on how to create and apply knowledge.
The lucky match-making of the two session hosts allowed for an intriguing comparison of two rather different projects. The BlueCity is a place (a landmark even) that offers space, literally and figuratively, for research and experimentation by people housed under the same roof – and thus resembles the ‘classic laboratory’ more closely. However, a lot is done regarding outreach and communication, as well as cooperation with other initiatives and higher education institutions. The BlueCity has been created ‘bottom-up’, albeit building on “established connections that provided a facilitating environment”.
The Rotterdam knowledge labs, in contrast, were created ‘top-down’ based on an initial agreement between the mayor and the Board of Erasmus University and are a dispersed, collaborative network of people working in different places. Moreover, municipal and scientific members study various places, neighbourhoods or communities in the city and reach out to citizens for participation. Crucially, initiatives thus brought into being are followed and evaluated which implies an action research-inspired approach to science and policymaking – and seems to turn the entire city into a ‘laboratory’.
