Urban experimentation & sustainability transitions

ABSTRACT

This special issue deals with various research questions regarding the impact of urban experimentation on transitions towards sustainability in different industries and sectors. Cities have been identified to play a vital role for sustainability transitions. Not only are they places with an increased urgency for change, but they also bring about many current sustainability initiatives and interventions. This special issue focuses on investigating the relationship between urban experimentation and institutional change. The articles shed light on various characteristics of urban environments that influence experimentation and potentially lead to institutional change and thus elaborate on some of the distinct mechanisms through which urban experimentation can lead to broader systemic changes.

KEYWORDS:

• Experimentation
• urban
• institutional change
• sustainability transitions
• cities

Cities have increasingly been identified as particularly important places for sustainability transitions and related system innovations to emerge and unfold (Bulkeley, Castán Broto, Hodson, & Marvin, 2011; Frantzeskaki, Coenen, Castán Broto, & Loorbach, 2017; Hodson, Geels, & McMeekin, 2017; Loorbach & Shiroyama, 2016; Moore, de Haan, Horne, & Gleeson, 2018). A recent literature review on the ‘urban’ in sustainability transitions by Wolfram and Frantzeskaki (2016) shows that there is an increasing attention on the urban context within sustainability transition studies and also an increasing interest from urban studies on examining sustainability transition dynamics.

Cities are places with an increased urgency for sustainability transitions and system innovations, e.g. due to high energy consumption (ca. two-thirds of global energy demand), CO₂ emissions (ca. 70%) or population growth (estimates suggest that by 2050 70% of people will live in cities). On the other hand, many new initiatives and interventions to counteract unsustainable behaviour and practices have originated in cities (IEA, 2011; UN (DESA), 2012). One case in point is the proliferation of Urban Living Labs (ULL) – urban sites devised to design, test and learn from social and technical innovation in real time (Marvin, Bulkeley, Mai, McCormick, & Voytenko Palhan, 2018) – as experimental spaces in cities (Evans, Karvonen, & Raven, 2016; Voytenko, McCormick, Evans, & Schliwa, 2016). This prompts the immediate question whether and how urban spaces have the potential to act as ‘agents of transformative change’ by designing and implementing progressive policies or by providing a favourable context for social and technological innovations to be created and scaled up, as suggested e.g. by Smeds and Acuto (in press): Leading ‘by example’ and demonstrating the extent of action that it is possible to deliver, cities have aspired to raise the ambition of national and international climate governance and put action into practice via a growing number of ‘climate change experiments’ delivered on the ground.

In order to advance our understanding of the role of cities for transformative change, this special issue seeks to shed light on a so far rather neglected topic: The relationship between experimentation and institutional change. On the one hand, transition studies point to experimentation as a means to induce change (Hoogma, Kemp, Schot, & Truffer, 2002; Kemp, Schot, & Hoogma, 1998; Seyfang & Smith, 2007; Smith & Raven, 2012). Experimentation is often considered a way to seed change that over time may lead to a fundamental transformation of a system. It is believed to be a process of developing and trialling innovations as well as corresponding institutions that nurture and scale them over time. Experiments facilitate a process, where emerging and fluid ideas, practices, expectations, technologies, and new social relations can develop and align into a new, potentially more sustainable socio-technical configuration that, if diffused more broadly, will radically alter the existing system. Previous research has found that experimentation has facilitated various key processes in sustainability transitions such as networking, collaboration, forging alliances, creating a shared vision and various forms of learning (Berkhout et al., 2010; Nevens, Frantzeskaki, Gorissen, & Loorbach, 2013). Experimentation is seen to take place in various forms, e.g. technological niches (Hoogma et al., 2002; Smith & Raven, 2012), transition experiments (Forrest & Wiek, 2015; Kemp & Loorbach, 2006; Loorbach, 2007) or living labs (Evans et al., 2016; Voytenko et al., 2016).

On the other hand, sustainability transitions can be conceptualized as processes of institutional change (Fuenfschilling & Binz, 2018; Geels, 2004). Socio-technical systems are assumed to be rigid and inert because they have developed a historically grown, highly institutionalized socio-technical configuration, i.e. a socio-technical regime (Fuenfschilling & Truffer, 2014; Rip & Kemp, 1998; Smith, Stirling, & Berkhout, 2005). Since sustainability transitions are generally seen as regime shifts, the goal of a transition is to de-institutionalize existing configurations and institutionalize new, potentially more desirable ones. Accordingly, the question becomes: How do these processes of (de-)institutionalization unfold?

To date, experimentation is not directly linked to the question of (de-)institutionalization. It is not specified how and to what extent experimentation contributes to overall institutional change nor how these processes play out across space. A better understanding of these relationships allows for a richer assessment of the role of cities for sustainability transitions and raises a set of pertinent questions: how does urban experimentation affect institutional change, how do innovations resulting out of urban experimentation become institutionalized or lead to the deinstitutionalization of established socio-technical configurations and do cities have particular properties that foster experimentation? These underexplored topics are particularly relevant and timely as cities have adopted innovation and experimentation as a way of governing ‘grand challenges’, such as climate change (Bai et al., 2016; Bulkeley et al., 2014). A thorough understanding of the way(s) experimentation affects processes of (de-)institutionalization and institutional change will provide critical insights into the design, politics and limitations of experiments for sustainability transitions.

With this motivation at hand, this special issue offers contributions that explore these research themes from various theoretical perspectives and showcase empirical material from different societal and industrial domains. Four research questions were of particular interest:

What are the characteristics of urban environments that influence experimentation and potentially lead to institutional change? A somewhat understudied aspect of institutional change in the context of sustainability transitions refers to the question of where such changes take place and why, i.e. to their spatial dimensions (Coenen, Benneworth, & Truffer, 2012). Are there places with specific characteristics, e.g. institutional conditions or technological capabilities, which foster transition processes or do they happen anywhere (Hansen & Coenen, 2015)? Why are cities seen as relevant loci for transformative change (Bulkeley et al., 2011; Mieg & Töpfer, 2013; Pickett et al., 2013)? Current literature suggests that urban spaces are characterized by a high degree of complexity and interrelation of various actors and sectors, by a high concentration of resources (e.g. knowledge, capital) or by high diversity of actors in regard to socio-economic backgrounds or education (Frantzeskaki et al., 2017). However, how these properties relate to the potential for experimentation and institutional change is understudied. Looking at contributions from institutional theory, one can interpret attributes like complexity, diversity or resources to entail opportunities as well as challenges for transformative change (Fuenfschilling, 2017). Further research is needed to specify why and in what regard cities might provide conducive or hindering environments for experimentation and institutional change in general.

What are the different forms and the distinct mechanisms of urban experimentation that enable broader systemic change? Experimentation is a process of trialling, discovering and testing that can take different forms and be set-up in many different ways. While some forms of experimentation are centred around emerging technologies and knowledge, others concentrate on fostering new collaborations, networks and forms of interactions. What are the different forms of urban experimentation, their rationale and design?

What is the role of experimentation during the course of (de-)institutionalization processes in urban sustainability transitions? Institutional theory offers a lot of insight into the process and nature of (de-) institutionalization of a variety of structures (e.g. norms, regulation, cognitive rationalities), suggesting that there are different phases of institutionalization – habitualization, objectification, sedimentation – that come with their own properties and implications for innovation and change (Barley & Tolbert, 1997; Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Tolbert & Zucker, 1999). In each case, the degree of institutionalization of a structure (like a certain socio-technical configuration) increases due to diffusion and mainstreaming of various sorts, making it more path-dependent and rigid. In transition studies, experimentation has so far mainly been analyzed in relation to the question of niche formation, i.e. the first step of institutionalization, whereas the institutionalization process of the niche into a stable socio-technical regime has largely been framed in other ways, e.g. as a matter of adequate institutional settings (regulations) or financial incentives. Looking at the role of experimentation beyond niches will shed light on ideas of experimentation for scaling and mainstreaming processes. While it is likely that mechanisms of experimentation that lead to niche formation, e.g. networking, collaboration, creating a shared vision or learning, are also important in further institutionalizing this niche, there may be other mechanisms at play as well. The role of experimentation and its distinctive mechanisms of facilitating institutional change thus need to be studied in more detail, since they could be crucial for the whole transition pathway. Experimentation is not just crucial for the institutionalization of novelty, but can also contribute to the deinstitutionalization of dominant, unsustainable configurations. To examine the role of experimentation in deinstitutionalization of existing unsustainable practices and routines, especially in the absence of viable alternatives, is thus an interesting question for governance of sustainability transitions.

Can urban experimentation be organized and facilitated? Is it a suitable governance mechanism? The assessment of a diverse range of mechanisms and outputs of experimentation raises the question whether it is possible to substantiate ideal-type principles for experimentation that enable a facilitated emergence as well as institutionalization of novel socio-technical configurations. In line with this, experimentation is increasingly framed as a potential governance mechanism (Bulkeley et al., 2016). This raises opportunity for theoretical and empirical inquiry about if and how urban experimental settings can be used to actively and purposefully steer transition processes. In particular, the role of different actors in experimenting should be more closely examined in order to understand the type of governance created through experimentation.

The articles in this special issue respond to various aspects of the above outlined research questions, taking on different theoretical perspectives and empirical cases. We briefly present their main insights below.

The contribution by von Wirth, Fuenfschilling, Frantzeskaki and Coenen entitled ‘Impacts of urban living labs on sustainability transitions: mechanisms and strategies for systemic change through experimentation’ examines the potential of experimentation to lead to broader systemic change. Specifically, they study the effect of four urban living labs (ULL) in two cities in Sweden and The Netherlands by analyzing the underlying processes through which these ULL might be able to generate and diffuse new socio-technical configurations beyond their immediate boundaries. The study reveals six specific strategies that aim to support the diffusion of innovations and know-how developed within ULL to a broader context. These include network activities, education and training, entrepreneurial growth and replication of lab structures as well as creating convincing narratives of change and deliberate socio-spatial embedding of the ULL. Despite these various processes aiming at institutionalizing and diffusing innovations from these sites of experimentation, the authors also note that ULL do not necessarily aim at transformative change and often do not provide any resources to get bigger or to get replicated. In addition, an inherent conflict between experimentation and broader change can be observed that revolves around the issue that experiments often by definition want to be small and local instead of being used as a vehicle for broader change. The question thus arises if other types of actors, institutional structures and resources would be necessary to harvest the innovations brought about by local experiments.

Kronsell and Mukthar-Landgren ask in their contribution ‘Experimental governance: The role of municipalities in urban living labs’ how municipalities can facilitate urban sustainability through experimental governance. They analyze 50 case studies of urban living labs (ULL) across Europe to explore the role of municipalities in the development and facilitation of ULL. The study shows that municipality typically take on three distinct roles: they act as promoter, enabler, or partner. This result was independent from the formal constitutional differences between municipalities in different countries. The authors stress two capacities of municipalities to engage in experimental governance through ULL, namely the capacity and will to organize funding and capacity and will to initiate and govern collaborations. Through both these mechanisms, municipalities can either take an active role in shaping transformation processes or hinder them. The findings of this paper are in line with the recent writings on the observed and needed shifts of roles in local governments for allowing experimentation to become part of the governance repertoire in cities. It contributes with evidence that local governments require not only to initiate and regulate experiments, but rather collaborate and create enabling contexts for learning approaches to take off.

Raven, Sengers, Spaeth, Xie, Cheshmehzangi and de Jong study how institutional arrangements differ across urban contexts and how they coevolve with urban experimentation. In their article ‘Urban experimentation and institutional arrangements’ they compare smart city developments in three cities in the Netherlands, Germany and China by analyzing the respective regulative, normative and cognitive institutional arrangements and their effects on smart city initiatives. They show how each institutional context is unique and thus creates different versions of smart city experimentations. Besides the urban specificities and embeddedness, the authors stress that also national governance styles and policy programmes shape what is going at the city level. Institutions and institutional arrangements that affect experimentation thus need to be understood as broader than the geographical boundaries of the urban.

In a similar vein, also Madsen and Hansen question the advantages ascribed to the urban context in regard to experimentation and transitions. Their contribution ‘Cities and climate change – examining advantages and challenges of urban climate change experiments’ focuses on urban climate change experiments in two cities in Denmark, where they analyze the advantages and challenges of organizing climate change experiments at the urban scale. They study how local actions translate into effect, both in terms of achieving climate goals as well as institutional change. The authors conclude that the commonly named advantages of urban experimentation, such as centralized authority and opportunities for engagement and mobilization, are not of central importance in the Danish context and that, to the contrary, the highly complex nature of urban climate change experiments regarding plurality of actors and opinions frequently hinder the fulfilment of the experimentś goals. They thus call for more comparative research regarding the geographical scale of experiments as well as how effects interrelate between different scales.

Pesch, Spekkink and Quist discuss the relevance of local sustainability initiatives (LSI) as vehicles for the democratization of innovation using various empirical examples from The Netherlands. In their article ‘Local sustainability initiatives in an urban context: Innovation and civic engagement in societal experiments’ they show that LSI can be sites where new technologies are created or social innovations developed, but that they are also places of civic engagement that lead to the strengthening of social capital, the formation of social movements or the substitutions of current functions and services. The authors portray LSI as social contexts that are successful in gathering actors with different backgrounds and motivations and enable the public to exert influence over the trajectory of innovation and the nature of sustainability in a way that traditional institutional domains do not allow. As such, LSI can be seen as spaces of self-governance that go beyond traditional institutional boundaries and thus increase the democratic legitimacy of sustainable innovation.

In his article ‘Energy efficiency left behind? Policy assemblages in Swedeńs most climate smart city’, Parks focuses on smart city experiments in the area of building energy use in the city of Malmö, Sweden. He asks how smart city experiments reshape the urban governance of building energy use and analyzes the processes through which the results of the experiments get institutionalized or how they contribute to the de-institutionalization of established structures. One of the main insights of the study is that smart city technologies are indeed able to reshape urban governance, in particular by restructuring the relationship between actors such as the city administration, energy utilities and developers. Specifically, the results show that the new technologies might give corporate actors, such as energy utilities, a bigger say in the design of buildings, which can be interpreted as an example of smart city governance innovation. Parks concludes that this type of corporate involvement has the potential to increase sustainability in the energy system because energy utilities could be more successful than local government in encouraging developers to pay attention to energy issues at the beginning of the design process, which would advance the institutionalization of smart technologies more broadly.

The article by Horne and Moloney, ‘Urban low carbon transitions: institution-building and prospects for interventions in social practice’, investigates the role of intermediary organizations in institution building for urban low carbon transitions. They use the example of Climate Change Alliances (CCA) in Victoria, Australia to show how intermediary organizations seek to experiment and in so doing contribute to institution building. These intermediary organizations occupy an interesting place for institutional change by comprising actors from local authorities, regional firms, agencies, and state government. The authors show that these CCA are particularly apt to network, navigate between different local priorities and interests and develop shared goals and visions. Three main ways of affecting a transition towards low carbon are identified: Altering the material/technology elements from fossil fuels to renewables; altering competencies, skills and knowledge towards low carbon direction; altering social meanings and common understandings towards low carbon visions. However, the authors also elaborate on the difficulties such intermediaries face when experimenting with more sustainable solutions, such as unfavourable structures in their broader environment, many tensions caused by multi-faceted interests of different actors across various scales or a large bureaucracy of monitoring and evaluations.

The set of papers in the special issue all remind us of the complexity and messy nature of urban innovation and experimentation in a context of sustainability transitions. It is a ‘laborious, time-consuming, and precarious process marked by the delicate interplay of a variety of social, technical, cultural and economic factors’ (Hommels, 2005, p. 328). Experimentation may indeed be a more apposite conceptualization to capture the creative destruction process at play rather than the continuum of innovation. While still a fluid notion that can take on different meanings and forms, Ansell and Bartenberger (2016) defined it broadly as collective search and exploration processes in which a broad suite of stakeholders like firms, universities, government and civil society are navigating, negotiating and reducing uncertainty about new socio-technical innovations through real-world experiments, gaining knowledge and experience along the way in an iterative learning-by-doing and doing-by-learning process.

This emphasis on somewhat ambiguous processes and practices can be contrasted to a more ‘neat’, rationalistic approach to novelty creation that can be associated to systemic approaches to innovation (Ibert, 2007). While experimentation and innovation both emphasize creativity, risk-taking and a diversity and density in knowledge, actors, interests and capabilities – features that are readily associated with urban environments – experimentation, importantly, allows more explicitly for acceptance of failure and learning-by-failing. Experimentation is about de-risking new solutions or approaches by learning about and with them in an open and safe space. As such experimentation can be initiated or even designed as a specific solution or approach and generate more diffused and diverse learning outcomes. Hence, experimentation is open-ended, uncertain for outcome generation and requires trust in both the people who are collaborating in the experimentation as well as in the experimentation process itself. Experimentation brings out much more prominently the understanding that transitions are politically contested and thus open-ended phenomena, rather than simple passages from one socio-technical state to another (that follows a S-curved pattern).

This broadening up also points to a major challenge in synthesizing the insights from this special issue. The term institution is, undisputedly, a broad category. While considerable progress has been made in determining how institutions enable and constrain innovation performance across city-regions and countries, we may have opened up a ‘can-of-worms’ when relating institutions to experiments and experimentation. One thing that the special issue contributions clearly show, however, is that experimentation and institutions are closely interlinked. Institutional settings define the degree and form of experimentation that is deemed legitimate in a specific geographical context, thereby clearly affecting the opportunity space for innovation and change. Experimentation, on the other hand, affects institutions. It is a safe space and vehicle through which to establish the relevant institutional environment for new practices, new narratives and new actors. Experimentation can shift informal institutions into the direction of risk-rich spaces for trialling new solutions and altering practice and design elements of dominant solutions. The experimental character increases the legitimacy of deviation and creates a broader range for agency by various actors that goes beyond the highly institutionalized realm. Experimentation thus legitimizes innovation and change, if only in the confined space of the respective experiment. However, these deviations are regarded as necessary to plant the seeds for broader transformative change.

While we can witness that experimentation has become a mode of governance for urban sustainability transitions, the papers remind us to position urban experimentalism and governance experimentation in a multi-level governance context. The special issue cautions against too heroic assumptions and naïve expectations ‘when mayors rule the world’ (Barber, 2013) and to avoid myopic perspectives on urban sustainability transitions driven in and by cities themselves. Rather, we suggest considering urban experimentation as part and parcel of experimentalist governance understood as a ‘recursive process of provisional goal setting and revision based on learning from comparison of alternative approaches to advancing these goals in different contexts’ (Overdevest & Zeitlin, 2014, p. 25). Key to experimentalist governance, however, is to acknowledge that experimentation is only meaningful in a multi-level architecture as this allows for monitoring, evaluating and translating lessons learned from local experiments beyond its own territorial context. This implies that urban experimentation only makes sense in relation to supra-urban or networked governance structures as they allow for experiments to institutionalize or not. Further research is therefore needed to better understand the role of global city networks such as ICLEI, C40 or Rockefeller’s 100 Resilient Cities as well as supra-national structures such as that of the EU in institutionalizing urban experimentation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.