In the past decade, we have witnessed a multitude of urban living labs (ULLs) mushrooming in cities across the worldFootnote 1 (Bulkeley et al. 2019; Marvin et al. 2018; Evans et al. 2016). This first generation of multi-actor platforms for co-creation, real-life experiments and joint learning in cities has received considerable scholarly attention, specifically from urban geographers (Hodson et al. 2018), urban planners (Kronsell et al. 2018), sustainability transition scholars (Von Wirth et al. 2020; Scholl et al. 2018; Bulkeley et al. 2017) and (socio-technical) innovation researchers (Dijk et al. 2018; Scholl and Kemp 2016). These studies often emphasize the potential of ULLs for innovating urban governance and planning as well as for finding innovative solutions to urban sustainability challenges. ULLs appear to fit into both the discourse of innovation under the neoliberal logic of urban competitiveness, and the promise of experimentation capable of addressing pressing urban policy agendas surrounding sustainability and climate governance (Bulkeley et al. 2014).
However, divergent views are apparent in the literature concerning the application domain of innovations generated in ULLs. Some scholars (e.g., Karvonen and Van Heur 2014) stress the ability of ULLs to create highly context-sensitive and locally-relevant knowledge, while others, including national and international funding agencies, emphasize their potential to produce scalable and transferable innovations (e.g., Schäpke et al. 2018; JPI Urban Europe 2019). This divergence coincides with a focus on the role of ULLs in transforming local governance (Scholl and De Kraker 2021a; Karvonen 2018), versus a primary interest in the contribution these labs can make to system-wide sustainability transitions (Sengers et al. 2019; Von Wirth et al. 2020). In the latter case, much attention is paid to how innovations and lessons can diffuse beyond the confines of the ULL. Although empirical studies have yielded a variety of such mechanisms (Von Wirth et al. 2018; Peng et al. 2019; Loorbach et al. 2020), the contribution of urban experimentation to sustainability transformations is thus far less than expected (Evans et al. 2021; Ryghaug and Skjølsvold 2021; Grandin et al. 2018). Frantzeskaki et al. (2017) observed that in several cities impacts on adjacent or interrelated systems have been demonstrated, but that wider impacts of local experiments beyond their specific context of operation are difficult to find. Similar observations have recently been made by Eneqvist and Karvonen (2021) and Evans et al. (2021). A possible explanation for this could be found in the local focus of most ULLs, which is either at the level of the city or the neighbourhood (Bulkeley et al. 2019). In practice, ULL experimentation tends to poorly anticipate upscaling beyond the scale of the experiment (Dijk et al. 2018), and learning processes tend to remain implicit and unstructured (Evans et al. 2021). Besides, many of the local urban actors participating in ULLs do not necessarily aim at transformative change or diffusion beyond the boundaries of the lab, nor are these labs provided with the resources to do so (Scholl and De Kraker 2021b; Puerari et al. 2018; Von Wirth et al. 2018; Scholl and Kemp 2016).
Thus, there appears to be a tension between the way ULL practitioners and participants currently operate and the way experiments could contribute to tackling broader societal challenges, as argued by sustainability scholars in particular. This raises the question whether these higher ambitions can be met by following a different approach for the future generation of ULLs. Such a new approach should include improvements in the local ULL approach, but also improved connections between experiments on different places. We elaborate the second argument here in this paper: local learning processes of current ULLs and the envisioned system-wide sustainability transformations should and can be linked better through a transurban meta-learning approach. Meta-learning is understood here as learning across multiple, distributed local experiments (Wolfram et al. 2019), fostering joint learning on system-wide sustainability transformations.
Sustainability transition scholars have proposed the formation of networks to promote transfer and meta-learning across experiments and the application of lessons and innovations across geographic boundaries in order to stimulate wider sustainability transformations (Moloney and Horne 2015; Von Wirth et al. 2018; Peng et al. 2019). Some of these networks have proven to be effective in translocal diffusion of grassroots social innovations (Loorbach et al. 2020). However, our review of the broader literature on city networks below identifies several pitfalls in transurban meta-learning, specifically concerning the predominantly local focus of ULLs.
To inspire a new generation of ULLs (‘ULL 2.0’), we present a perspective on how to effectively promote and coordinate transurban meta-learning processes while avoiding these pitfalls by carefully designing a new organizational structure. It concerns a so-called ‘meta-lab approach’, connecting local living lab experiments and facilitating meta-learning in a new way. A meta-lab can be defined as a transurban multi-actor network to connect and where possible align the learning processes across thematically related ULLs in different urban contexts through a central learning agenda. A meta-lab approach acknowledges the need for a well-framed and coordinated learning process as it has emerged in the EU’s “architecture of experimentalist governance” (Sabel and Zeitlin 2008). It also goes beyond the mere comparison of differences between local solutions and forges joint learning processes. Meta-labs differ from more open and thematically unfocused networks of living labs, such as ENoLL, in that they connect ULLs that share a thematic focus and, therefore, use some form of selection for network members. Besides, they also differ from established city networks, such as, e.g., Eurocities, ICLEI, the Climate Alliance, and 100 Resilience Cities (see Davidson et al. 2019; Frantzeskaki 2019), in that they include non-governmental actors in their membership, such as knowledge institutions, companies and citizen platforms, and provide focus for joint learning though a central learning agenda.
A meta-lab does not execute experiments itself but connects the learning processes across ULLs in different urban contexts. We argue that a meta-lab can function as a as a bridge by, on the one hand, respecting and supporting local learning agendas and their focus on local solutions for local problems, while, on the other hand, acknowledging and utilizing the potential of local experiments to contribute to a central learning agenda on system-wide sustainability transformations. ULLs are free to define what these central learning goals mean in their specific context.
Meta-labs can catalyze learning in two important ways: (1) by accelerating local experimentation and learning processes, feeding them with lessons from other locations through continued harvesting and redistribution of local lessons learned; and (2) by facilitating a more focused – local and transurban – learning process through a shared learning agenda. The meta-lab approach thus stimulates urban sustainability transformations by supporting faster, more focussed and wider learning about effective innovations.
In what follows, we first summarize common pitfalls in transurban learning as identified in the literature on city networks. These pitfalls corraborate the need for a different transurban learning approach. We then outline our perspective on the meta-lab approach providing a concrete example where this approach is implemented (SUMMALab). Finally, we sketch a number of key conditions that need to be in place in order to avoid the pitfalls of city networks and earlier ULL approaches.