Adapting the Living Lab Methodology: The Prefix ‘Co’ as an Empowerment Tool for Urban Regeneration in Large-Scale Social-Housing Estates (original) (raw)
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Beyond participation. Urban Living Labs for Urban Regeneration in Social Housing Estates
The Urban Book Series, Springer Nature, 2023
Aernouts, F. Cognetti de Martiis, E. Maranghi (eds.) (2023), Beyond participation. Urban Living Labs for Urban Regeneration in Social Housing Estates, Chaim: Springer Nature. Today, Living Labs are increasingly promoted as innovative tools to deal with urban regeneration in Europe. In this book, we look at their potential in the context of the regeneration of large-scale social housing estates. Starting from the results of the research project SoHoLab (2017–2020), we identify Living Labs as practices that are at the margin of key regeneration processes and actors but that nonetheless play an important, enabling role in triggering a more broadly supported approach to regeneration. We use the metaphor of the ‘interstice’ to identify Living Labs’ role of mediating across different social, institutional, disciplinary, departmental, and policy realms. Nevertheless, caution is warranted. Living Labs should not be considered the approach towards the urban regeneration of marginalized areas; their potential lies precisely in their hybrid and constantly transforming character. In order to steer regeneration practices and policies that are actually more inclusive, they should be accompanied by a critical and self-reflexive research attitude.
Urban Living Lab for Local Regeneration
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Urban mobility in its broader meaning has become fundamental in neoliberal times, for it determines who gets what, how often, and at what cost. While motility is a component of mobility—together with connectivity and reversibility—defined by Kaufmann (2014) as a quality of the actor and/or of the dialectical relation between the self and the field of the possible, and accessibility concerns the structures necessary to take part in this possible, porosity is a quality of the territory and/or of the dialectical relation between space and society. The three of them inseparably carry the city dwellers’ possibilities of fulfilling their projects and wishes in the city territory. In order to start picturing how the society–space dialectic based on motility, accessibility, and porosity shapes daily social relations, especially where spatial justice is at stake, this study—part of the all-encompassing Action Research Project Mapping San Siro—surveyed 100 inhabitants of the Milanese neighbou...
Introduction: Framing Living Labs in Large-Scale Social Housing Estates in Europe
The urban book series, 2022
Today, Living Labs are increasingly promoted as innovative tools to deal with urban regeneration in Europe. In this contribution, we look at their potential in the context of the regeneration of large-scale social housing estates. Starting from the results of the research project SoHoLab (2017-2020) and building on the contributions of this book, we identify Living Labs as practices that are at the margin of key regeneration processes and actors but that nonetheless play an important, enabling role in triggering a more broadly supported approach to regeneration. We use the metaphor of the 'interstice' to identify Living Labs' role of mediating across different social, institutional, disciplinary, departmental, and policy realms. Nevertheless, caution is warranted. Living Labs should not be considered the approach towards the urban regeneration of marginalized areas; their potential lies precisely in their hybrid and constantly transforming character. In order to steer regeneration practices and policies that are actually more inclusive, they should be accompanied by a critical and self-reflexive research attitude. Keywords Living labs • Large-scale social housing estates • Interstice 1.1 Why Opt for a Living Lab Approach in Large-Scale Social Housing Estates? In the often-cited Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, authors Rittel and Webber (1973) highlight the so-called wicked problems in an increasingly differentiated and pluralistic society, which cannot be tackled trough 'optimal solutions' by planners, not even through 'solutions'. According to them, 'social problems are never
Urban Living Labs: Insights for Institutionally Promoted Urban Policies
The urban book series, 2022
This chapter presents the results of a study that analyzed the conditions in which it is possible to scale-up to the Urban Living Lab (ULL) approach, which was developed in large-scale social housing neighbourhoods, characterized by phenomena of social and spatial marginalization. Specifically, the aim of the study is to provide indications and tools, but also indicate challenges and critical issues to those public institutions interested in promoting and adopting, in such contexts, the ULL approach for programmes of social and/or urban regeneration. The study is based on a comparative analysis of local experimentations produced both by launching or consolidating the ULL, promoted by universities within the SoHoLab project in three European cities and by a public programme developed in the Lombardy region from 2014, which has features in common with the ULL. The study analyzed the documentation produced and thirty interviews with different stakeholders (public institutions, NGOs, social housing companies). Considering some specific topics and the important lessons learned from the local projects, the chapter deals with the theme of the transferability of labs, from a local level to a regional or national level, by an institutional lever.
2017
Are we sure that public action in housing in Italy is an outdated issue and what is left of public housing estates is more a problem than a resource? The paper aims at challenging this view at the light of the results of a three years action-research in the public housing estate of San Siro in Milan. Studying the neighbourhood from inside and interacting with inhabitants and local actors allows focusing the role plaid by the estate in the city, the problems of the area as well as the variety of practices developed by inhabitants to address day life problems. Looking at this peculiar situation through the lens of an interactive approach affords insights to understand some general trends in marginal neighbourhoods and design more effective policies. The paper develops two lines of argument: the relationship between the methodological approach adopted and the understanding of marginal situations; the capacity of public housing stock to address some new living needs in urban areas. In the first, the main issues at stake concern the tools to produce scientific and usable knowledge effectively dealing with the social-spatial exclusion of residents in underprivileged large-scale social housing estates. Usable knowledge conceived as a form of capacity building. In the second, at the core of analysis innovative forms of collaboration and exchange among inhabitants and local institutions (University becoming one of the actors).These reflections open new fields of action for housing policies: a new sense of public housing as a common good in a perspective of interaction and participation among public institutions, inhabitants and local actors.
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In recent decades, many city authorities have been implementing strategies for the development of urban regeneration in their central areas. Most of these processes aim to improve the use of public space, and are often to be found in historic areas and waterfronts. The aim of this text is to put forward an alternative urban regeneration plan which focuses on the peripheral areas of cities, areas which were often built as neighbourhoods of social housing, and which now face environmental challenges as well as social and economic ones. To this end, the URBiNAT H2020 project is promoting inclusive urban regeneration that engages citizens and stakeholders in all the stages of the co-creation process. The overall objective is to implement a cluster of human-centred, nature-based solutions (NBS) in order to create Healthy Corridors that bring together both material and immaterial solutions that will impact the environment and the wellbeing of the community. The activation of Living Labs i...
Beyond a Buzzword: Situated Participation Through Socially Oriented Urban Living Labs
in Aernouts N., Cognetti F., Maranghi E. (eds.), Urban Living Lab for Local Regeneration. Beyond Participation in Large-scale Social Housing Estates,The Urban Book Series, Springer Nature, 2023
In the broader framework of Living Labs and participatory planning, the essay proposes socially-oriented Urban Living Labs as a possible way of understanding and experimenting with participation in marginalized contexts. It does so by applying a focus on individual/collective capacities and enabling processes to support them. Drawing on the literature and the observation and implementation of concrete cases, the essay proposes a reflection on ULLs as situated environments in which “everyone’s” capacities are formed and tested, thus challenging the functioning of local democracy. This implies a focus as much on residents and local agents as on institutions. The perspective is the implementation of an enabling and mutual learning process through devices to reinforce organizations and people’s ability to reflect on, aspire to, and take action for the transformation of their life context, becoming real agents of change.
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This article aims to introduce the concept of Permanent Urban Living Lab (PULL) as a method for urban transformative capacity building. Since the beginning of 2000s, the urban living labs (ULLs) are being researched and examined as experimental settings that bring together various stakeholders, such as citizens, researchers, businesses, and policymakers, to co-create and test innovative solutions for urban developments. They offer a collaborative and participatory approach to urban solutions that engages and empowers local communities and fosters a culture of a shared foresight process and mutual learning. In the context of local development, the ULLs can serve as a powerful tool for building the urban transformative capacities (UTC) by providing a platform for local actors to develop their skills, knowledge, and networks for intersectoral cooperation, and by creating opportunities for experimentation and experiential learning. The case of Alytus, Lithuania, is an interesting example of how the urban living labs can be used to drive local development. Alytus is a mid-sized city in Lithuania, Northern Europe that has faced a range of social, geopolitical, economic, and environmental challenges typical of the region in recent years, including declining population, high unemployment, and deteriorating public spaces. The aim of this article is to analyse the perspective of implementation of European policies and methodologies presented in the Urban Europe Programme if applied to the search of transformative capacities' building for better city co-governance. In this respect, methods of the quadrupole helix model, urban living labs, force field analysis and different forms of co-creation are discussed as the founding elements for initiating a digital platform for citizens' involvement and participation in urban transformations.
Urban Transformations
Urban living labs (ULLs) can be an important way to approach multi-stakeholder co-creation with regard to urban transitions and transformations. They have become a common type of co-creative experimentation, offering the opportunity to research and innovate on a wide variety of challenges in everyday settings. They test hypotheses to create pathways for a transition to sustainable urbanisation. However, there is mounting concern from practice, innovators, and research that there is little systematic integration of practical outputs. Moreover, the question of how ULLs should be designed, and by whom, requires comparative longer-term assessment. Implementation and operation requires knowledge of the risks involved. The long-term impacts of ULLs on particular places, and the general understanding of how they contribute to urban transformations, are not well theorized. Thus, intended and potential contributions to urban transformations could remain unrealized. Based on experience from a...