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SLU Urban Futures tema: Urban Labs

Publicerad: 11 oktober 2018

SLU Urban Futures arbetar med fyra temaområden inom plattformen. En av dessa teman fokuserar på "Urban Labs" och leds av Nina Vogel. Uppdraget handlar om att bygga ett forskningsnätverk kring varje tema, som inkluderar forskare, lärare och utövare, inom och utanför SLU, för att inspirera varandra och skapa större ‘communities of practice’.

Här följer Ninas beskrivning av temat Urban Labs:

What are Urban Labs?

There are different types of so-called real-world-labs (RWL). All have in common that processes of developing, designing, testing, learning happen in real-time and co-creation in direct (inter)connection to the life-context. New governance arrangements and co-production of knowledge serve as breading grounds for novel solution approaches and coping strategies.  

Why Urban Labs?

Today’s urbanization processes reflects rapid changes and challenges that provoke novel and flexible responses. One form of response by city authorities, developers, and communities is to engage in different forms of explorative practices - urban laboratories - such as living labs, design labs, maker spaces, urban experiments, etc. to search alternatives, identify new values and cope with (sudden) shifts.

Potentials & challenges with Urban Labs?

Urban labs can offer insights to alterations of regular planning and development as they can operate with novel actor constellations, different resources and combination of expertise (inter- and transdisciplinary). As such they offer spaces for learning and establishment of new capacities and knowledge. One prevailing challenge, however, is the long-term impact on e.g. policy renewal and to go beyond the experiment. Critical engagement with the evolution of urban labs will offer insights in pitfalls and untapped opportunities for transformation.

'SLU Lab Stories'

SLU Lab Stories is a series of teasers in form of short-films that introduce the SLU based research, projects and infrastructures that engage with laboratories. Such as: Green Innovation Park, Ultuna; Rehab Garden, Alnarp; Green-blue infrastructure Vinnova project in Malmö; NärKomm research project.

See the first SLU Urban Lab, with Green Innovation Park in Uppsala, here: