Can living laboratories help greening the economy in sustainable cities?
In the last decade, people have raised their awareness on the environment such as the need to increase greenery, biodiversity and the promote of sustainability. The topic on urban environments has became important. As climate change has been an urban challenge, cities have to make a change with sustainability and resilience, particularly the politics and governance of urban transitions.
Cities are now becoming places that do not only produce environmental problems, but also enabling the development of solutions. Due to the advanced technology and research on science, cities have learnt to become more sustainable. And this concept has been supported by the core element of ‘living laboratories’ that has provided a way for cities to learn how to be more sustainable.
This urban method has raised a central question to how cities in the future should shape its urban development towards a sustainable and prosperous future. As suggested by Evans (2011), the strive for sustainable cities are the engines for greening the economy by focusing the use of living laboratories to drive innovation that can effectively enhance urban development to achieve sustainability and climate goals. The practices and the opportunities that cities can go forward in the future with living laboratories will be explored in this blog.
The latest European Commission has called smart city funding and sustainable city funding for the upcoming years, specifying that cities have to use living laboratories. With the new form of innovative urbanism, cities are being driven by communities, often the citizens establish living lifestyle initiatives to shape smart cities. After all, the methodology of urban living laboratories address different areas, working with different stakeholders, driven by different actors. The main focus is to share the commitment to generate new social conditions through innovation.
The central question to living laboratories are whether the experiments can be applied in the long-term. The whole logic of these laboratories are based on a continual cycle of urban experiments and it requires the transformation of urban governance, in particular how cities are being managed. In terms of sustainability and smart cities, the system’s approach is fundamental and cities are moving towards to an integrated, coherent urban system. There are opportunities of urban living laboratories going forward.
For example, the Masdar City in United Arab Emirates, a technology-dominated approach to urban transition has developed commercially viable solutions to climate change and urban sustainability. The city was initially a testbed for a carbon-free lifestyle. The form of its living laboratory has tackle the issue of climate change in achieving a carbon-free future. The innovation has increased opportunities in the collaboration with post-graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and business opportunities offered by globalised energy markets. With the example of Masdar City, a university-led living laboratory approach, the future cities will need a reflexive mode of modernity if we are going to cope with the urban problems (Evans & Karvonen, 2010).
In the current situation, our society requires a mode of modern development that is capable of learning and incorporating political values with social intelligence. As Evans & Karvonen (2010) proposed, “we need institutions that can reconcile the science of data with the science of experience”. This reflects the promise of urban living laboratories by acting upon the real world with the technological data but also the people who are using and experience it that shapes the urban solutions. This also brings the opportunity for universities for driving urban living laboratories and climate change innovation.
The methodology of urban living laboratories are creating new platforms for new partnerships. This mode of shaping cities is a new kind of experimental urbanism that tries to work with new urban forms and partners to develop better solutions. There is also a greater role for universities with the evidence that can be provided by research, in particular to student-led research. As Ravetz (2009) suggested, “academic requires innovation simultaneously in physical and social science, and a policy environment that increasingly speaks the language of demonstrations, experiments and pilot projects.” These university-led research also associates with greater opportunity whether these urban experiments in living laboratories can drive the urban transformation. As there have been demonstrated projects in many different cities for decades now, the method of using living laboratories have often worked and yet cities are still not sustainable. So this comes back to the real question for how cities to upscale and make transition to a more generic urban system. The urban living laboratory methodology is vital to hold the promise for cities to generate robust learning to allow cities to become more sustainable.
To end this, it seems clear that the urban living laboratories are enabling places and are hosting new styles of experimentation. They provide platforms for collaboration, and enable cities to secure funding integrating with universities to create opportunities for a city-wide participation in urban innovation. I think this is the opportunity for cities to drive transformation to shape its urban development towards a innovative form of urbanism.
If you got value and have any other perspectives about living labs from this article, please feel free to comment and exchange ideas!!
Reference:
Evans, J. & Karvonen, A. (2010). Living Laboratories for Sustainability: Exploring the Politics and Epistemology of Urban Transition. Cities and Low Carbon Transitions (pp.126–141). London: Routledge.
Ravetz, J. (2009). Climate change: from global deadlock to local opportunity. Transforming Management. Retrieved from February 18, 2020, from http://tm.mbs.ac.uk
