Urban Living Labs (ULL) are considered spaces to facilitate experimentation about sustainability solutions. ULL represent sites that allow different urban actors to design, test and learn from socio-technical innovations. However, despite their recent proliferation in the European policy sphere, the underlying processes through which ULL might be able to generate and diffuse new socio-technical configurations beyond their immediate boundaries have been largely disregarded and it remains to be examined how they contribute to urban sustainability transitions. With this study, we contribute to a better understanding of the diffusion mechanisms and strategies through which ULL (seek to) create a wider impact using the conceptual lens of transition studies. The mechanisms of diffusion are investigated in four distinct ULL in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and Malmö, Sweden. The empirical results indicate six specific strategies that aim to support the diffusion of innovations and know-how developed within ULL to a broader context: transformative place-making, activating network partners, replication of lab structure, education and training, stimulating entrepreneurial growth and narratives of impact.

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.

Understanding the dynamics of stability and change is key to accelerate sustainability transitions. This paper aims to advance and inspire sustainability transition research on this matter by collecting insights from interpretative environmental discourse literature. We develop a heuristic that identifies and describes core discursive elements and dynamics in a socio-technical system. In doing so, we show how the interplay of meta-, institutionalized, and alternative discourses, dominant, marginal, and radical narratives, as well as weak and strong discursive agency influence the socio-technical configuration. The heuristic suggests three discursive lock-ins reinforcing the stabilization of socio-technical systems: unchallenged values and assumptions, incumbents’ discursive agency, and narrative co-optation. Furthermore, it explores three pathways of discursive change: disruptive, dynamic and cross-sectoral. Overall, this paper puts forward a discursive perspective on sustainability transitions. It offers additional analytical approaches and concepts for discursive transition studies, elaborated insights on the dynamics within and between the analytical dimensions of a socio-technical system, as well as a theoretical baseline for analyzing discursive lock-in mechanisms and pathways of discursive change.

This article develops a more comprehensive understanding of innovation-based renewal of industries from a structural perspective. Arguably, established perspectives offer rather simplistic views, portraying structures as either enabling or constraining for certain forms of regional industrial change. Inspired by work in organizational institutionalism on ‘institutional infrastructures’, this article focuses on the degree of elaboration and coherence as decisive features of regional structural conditions. Arguably, this conceptual lens allows for a better understanding of the potentials and limitations for industrial change entailed in different structural configurations. Empirically, we investigate renewal processes in traditional automotive regions in Austria and Sweden.

In 2014, the Swedish innovation agency Vinnova set up the program ‘Gender and Diversity for Innovation’, which has its roots in norm-critical innovation. In line with rationales for responsible innovation, a central aim of the program is to identify and challenge discriminatory norms to develop more inclusive and equal innovation processes. This article presents the findings of an in-depth analysis of 34 projects funded under the program. It explores how norm-critical innovation has been practiced and performed in various empirical settings and whether norm-critical innovation practices could be a way forward for the implementation of responsible innovation. Using a qualitative research design, we identify the most common activities and outputs in the projects and carve out the core characteristics of norm-critical innovation practice. Furthermore, the paper explores the value and limitation of norm-critical approaches for fostering responsible innovation and addressing societal challenges more broadly.