Temporal challenges of building a circular city district through living-lab experiments

Maarit Särkilahti, Maria Åkerman, Ari Jokinen and Jukka Rintala

European Planning Studies, 2022, vol. 30, issue 7, 1333-1354

Abstract: Urban living lab (ULL) experiments are expected to create grounds for circular city transitions but their temporal dynamics remain understudied. This study investigates the linkages of a particular sanitation experiment to a long-term urban development trajectories in the Hiedanranta ULL in the City of Tampere, Finland. The ethnographical study focuses on the temporal matches and mismatches of three interrelated timescales affecting the transformative potential of the experiment: (1) the experiment’s life cycle, (2) the brownfield ULL and (3) the formal land-use planning of the future city district. Temporal analysis showed that the creation of transformative capacity requires a long development trajectory beyond a single experiment. In this case, the long-term development of R&D networks and the persistence and maturation of the ULL with its variety of co-developing experiments enabled experiment implementation; changed the city’s sustainability discourse; and nurtured prominent cross-sectoral initiative of a super block. However, further implementation of ULL innovations in urban planning has proven to be difficult without a clear orchestrator. Practical recommendations highlight the need to clarify the strategic role of the ULL in experimental governance, transparent ULL processes that support learning, and overcoming transition barriers in the rigid infrastructure sector.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09654313.2021.1965963 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:eurpls:v:30:y:2022:i:7:p:1333-1354

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CEPS20

DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2021.1965963

Access Statistics for this article

European Planning Studies is currently edited by Philip Cooke and Louis Albrechts

More articles in European Planning Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().