Climate adaptation in urban environments is often constrained by rigid institutional rules and fragmented governance, which limit inclusive and context-specific planning of public spaces such as schoolyards. This study addresses this challenge by examining how collaborative planning can transform schoolyards, from asphalt-dominated, monofunctional spaces into green, climate-resilient community assets. The research employed the Institutional Analysis and Development framework within a qualitative case study design. Two public schools in the San Cristóbal de los Ángeles neighbourhood of Madrid served as case studies, with data collected through document analysis, participant observation, and interviews with municipal officials, urban planners, educators, and community members. Results indicate that the collaborative planning process reshaped rules in use, expanded the network of actors, and transformed decision-making processes. Existing rules were flexibly reinterpreted to allow new uses of space. Children, teachers, and residents became co-producers of the public space, expanding the governance network, where new deliberative practices emerged that improved coordination across people and organisations. These institutional changes occurred without formal regulatory reform, but with the reinterpretation of the game’s rules by each organisation. Thus, schoolyards can serve as laboratories for institutional innovation and participatory climate adaptation, demonstrating how urban experiments have the potential to catalyse not only physical transformations but also transformations in urban management.

NBS provides the technical basis for adaptation to climate change, and co-creation is the vehicle for the co-production of knowledge and innovation, both forming a strong binomial for the UE Green Infrastructures Strategy. Nonetheless, one of the main challenges for the implementation of effective co-creation strategies is the incorporation of knowledge from diverse social systems. Knowledge production has been approached through different methodological models, such as the quintuple helix innovation by Carayannis, or the diffuse/expert knowledge model by Manzini. These theoretical models are based on linear knowledge transfers, without sufficiently depicting alternative knowledge flows among (un)conventional actors. In view of these limitations, the research proposes a third strategy: the KREBS cycle of creativity defined by Oxman is a conceptual map capable of describing knowledge transfers across the four modalities of human creativity (i.e., science, engineering, design, and art). Providing sufficient “creative energy” in a co-creation process would guarantee the successful production of knowledge. Thus, the research seeks to illuminate different co-creation strategies to promote “creative energy” in the design of the Cyborg Garden (CG) in Madrid, giving a novel application to Oxman’s methodological framework based on the Carayannis’s and Manzini’s models.

Urban decarbonisation requires governance models that overcome the fragmentation and rigidity of traditional urban planning. This article presents a systemic and digital framework for managing urban decarbonisation portfolios aligned with the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities. Grounded in systems thinking and portfolio theory, this study develops an analytical taxonomy and an interactive digital tool to support strategic coordination, multistakeholder collaboration, and adaptive decision-making. The framework is empirically validated through the case of Madrid’s Climate City Contract, demonstrating its functionality and transferability. Using a mixed-method approach—combining co-creation workshops, interviews, document analysis, and iterative prototyping—this research maps interdependencies among projects, actors, and levers of change. The digital tool enables real-time visualisation of collaboration patterns, gaps, and synergies, enhancing strategic foresight and coordination capacity. Findings reveal that 75% of initiatives in Madrid’s CCC address climate adaptation, 80.36% are linked to knowledge generation, and key anchor projects serve as integrative hubs within the portfolio. This study concludes that the portfolio approach strengthens systemic innovation and reflexive governance by integrating digital infrastructures with collaborative planning processes. While challenges persist—including data integration, institutional capacity, and political dynamics—this research offers a replicable methodology for embedding mission-oriented strategies into urban governance. The digital portfolio emerges as a complementary governance tool that enhances transparency, organisational learning, and alignment across governance levels.

The introduction of forests in cities has been an observable trend in recent years, with planned forest management projects proliferating around the world. The fact that many urban forests in the public space are traditionally managed by top-down bureaucratic procedures and guided by expert knowledge raises questions about whether green areas should follow the same management approach as other urban infrastructures, such as mobility infrastructures, or whether they should explore a collaborative approach designed to engage diverse stakeholders. This article examines the challenges of innovating in urban forests, changing the management rules that may limit participatory and deliberative processes to support decision-making. In particular, we analyzed how introducing a co-creation stage impacted the traditional competitive public tender procedure in the Madrid Metropolitan Forest project, using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework. Results showed that the costs and benefits of innovation differ among involved actors, generating unintended deterrent effects for experimentation. To mitigate these decoupling effects, we suggest a strategic design of working rules and updating the shared incentive to move from a competitive and transactional logic to a more collaborative and co-creative form of connection.

Nature-Based Solutions are defined as infrastructures or systems which are inspired by, supported by, or copied from nature. This biophilic leitmotif has rapidly permeated and been prescribed in many fields, particularly in urban and architectural design, stimulating an invasion of green rhetorics not necessarily founded on genuine ecological performing. In this context, this article explores current gaps in the epistemology and rhetorics of NBS, expanding the field with alternative narratives such as cycle-based design and micro-scalar or process-oriented approaches. The concept of redundancy is here presented as a non-observable, still nature-based principle, already applied in disparate scientific fields such as information theory, cybernetics, or evolutionary biology, and introduced in design fields from a theoretical perspective. Novel applicability of the term will be articulated from design perspectives through various case studies, using a multi-scalar scope and concluding in a tentative taxonomy. Redundancy entails a shift from grammar-based to syntax-based design logics. Morphological redundancy is presented as an upgrade of NBS rhetorics, delivering a more advanced understanding of the hidden choreographies of nature.

Esta tesis doctoral, estructurada como un compendio de artículos científicos revisados por pares, explora el potencial de la experimentación urbana como estrategia para fortalecer la capacidad adaptativa del ecosistema urbano multiactor frente a la crisis climática. Frente a la urgencia e incertidumbre de los desafíos urbanos contemporáneos y a la necesidad de instrumentos de planeamiento más ágiles para abordar la complejidad, la experimentación urbana emerge como una estrategia complementaria al planeamiento urbano tradicional para mirar a la ciudad no como un objeto terminado, sino como un prototipo en evolución continua. Desde esta perspectiva, la experimentación urbana se concibe como una infraestructura institucional y cognitiva capaz de activar aprendizajes colectivos, reorganizar relaciones de poder y generar nuevas formas de acción colaborativa. La investigación articula un marco teórico interdisciplinar que integra aportes de la teoría de sistemas complejos, la planificación urbana, el enfoque de porfolios, la cocreación y el Modelo de Innovación de la Quíntuple Hélice. Metodológicamente, incorpora la selección de caso múltiple holístico con un enfoque híbrido Action Case, que combina enfoques interpretativos e intervencionistas, permitiendo al investigador desempeñar un rol activo como facilitador en los contextos estudiados. El núcleo empírico de la tesis se compone de cuatro estudios de caso desarrollados en Madrid, cada uno correspondiente a un artículo científico y abordado desde una escala distinta (mobiliario, equipamiento, barrio y ciudad). Esta estrategia multiescalar permite analizar la articulación entre intervenciones situadas y estructuras institucionales más amplias. Los principales hallazgos muestran que los experimentos urbanos promueven la producción de conocimiento, activan capacidades institucionales latentes y generan condiciones para la transformación sistémica. Se evidencia que, cuando son organizados e integrados en un porfolio de intervenciones interdependientes, los experimentos urbanos y proyectos adquieren mayor potencial de escalabilidad, incidencia política y sostenibilidad en el tiempo. Asimismo, se identifican fricciones estructurales que limitan su institucionalización, como la fragmentación organizativa, la rigidez normativa y la persistencia de marcos tecnocráticos en la administración pública. Además, la tesis ofrece un marco teórico-metodológico para integrar la experimentación urbana en el planeamiento urbano orientado a la adaptación y descarbonización, proponiendo herramientas conceptuales y operativas para gestionar porfolios urbanos colaborativos. De esta forma, la tesis argumenta que la institucionalización de la experimentación no debe entenderse como una fase preliminar del planeamiento, sino como un segundo sistema operativo que acompaña, complementa y transforma las formas tradicionales de gestionar y hacer la ciudad. ABSTRACT This doctoral thesis, structured as a compendium of peer-reviewed scientific articles, explores the potential of urban experimentation as a strategy to strengthen the adaptive capacity of the multi-stakeholder urban ecosystem in the face of the climate crisis. Given the urgency and uncertainty of contemporary urban challenges, as well as the need for more agile planning instruments to address complexity, urban experimentation emerges as a complementary strategy to traditional planning. It views the city not as a finished object but as a prototype in continuous evolution. From this perspective, urban experimentation is conceived as an institutional and cognitive infrastructure that can activate collective learning, reorganise power relations, and generate new forms of collaborative action. The research presents an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that integrates contributions from complex systems theory, collaborative planning, the portfolio approach, co-creation, and the Quintuple Helix Innovation Model. Methodologically, it incorporates the selection of multiple embedded cases with a hybrid action case approach, which combines interpretive and interventionist approaches, allowing the researcher to play an active role as a facilitator within the studied contexts. The empirical core of the thesis comprises four case studies developed in Madrid, each corresponding to a scientific article and approached from different scales (prototype, facility, neighbourhood, and city). This multi-scale strategy allows for the analysis of the articulation between situated interventions and broader institutional structures. The main findings indicate that urban experiments foster knowledge production, activate latent institutional capacities, and create conditions for systemic transformation. It is evident that, when organized and integrated into a portfolio of interdependent interventions, urban experiments and projects gain greater potential for scalability, policy impact, and long-term sustainability. Also, structural frictions that limit their institutionalisation are identified, such as organisational fragmentation, regulatory rigidity, and the persistence of technocratic frameworks in public administration. Furthermore, the thesis provides a theoretical and methodological framework for integrating experimentation into urban planning, focusing on adaptation and decarbonization, and proposes conceptual and operational tools for managing collaborative urban portfolios. Thus, the thesis argues that the institutionalisation of experimentation should not be understood as a preliminary phase of planning but rather as a secondary operating system that accompanies, complements, and transforms traditional ways of managing and creating cities.