Citizens and urban policy makers are experimenting with collaborative ways to tackle wicked urban issues, such as today’s sustainability challenges. In this article, we consider one particular way of collaboration in an experimental setting: Urban Living Labs (ULLs). ULLs are understood as spatially embedded sites for the co-creation of knowledge and solutions by conducting local experiments. As such, ULLs are supposed to offer an arena for reflexive, adaptive, and multi-actor learning environments, where new practices of self-organization and novel (infra-) structures can be tested within their real-world context. Yet, it remains understudied how the co-creation of knowledge and practices actually takes place within ULLs, and how co-creation unfolds their impacts. Hence, this paper focuses on co-creation dynamics in urban living labs, its associated learning and knowledge generation, and how these possibly contribute to urban sustainability transitions. We analyzed empirical data from a series of in-depth interviews and were actively involved with ULLs in the Rotterdam-The Hague region in the Netherlands. Our findings show five distinct types of co-creation elements that relate to specific dynamics of participation, facilitation, and organization. We conclude with a discussion on the ambivalent role of contextualized knowledge and the implications for sustainability transitions.

The work we will be discussing here explores how government, industry, the university, and the citizens of a city can arrive through a participatory design approach at an increased and mutual understanding and a shared vision of a desired smart city of the future. Elaborating upon insights from transition management studies and from the quadruple-helix knowledge production model, our work proposes a participatory approach for prototyping future cities that embraces practice-oriented design research activities and thus aims for practical impact. We will report on two cases, GovJam and Hackday Data of the Crowds, in which stakeholders were able to acquire through participatory prototyping an understanding of the possibilities of technology in city services of the future. Results from these sessions show that participating stakeholders indeed gained a new perspective upon issues facing the city, due to an increased awareness and understanding of, and empathy for, the interests of other stakeholders. We also found indications that transfer of knowledge was taking place from the prototyping sessions to the daily practice of participants working in the public sector.

Current open data systems lag behind in their promised value creation and sustainability. The objective of the current study is twofold: 1) to investigate whether existing open data systems meet the requirements of open data ecosystems, and 2) to develop a research agenda that discusses the gaps between current open data systems on the one hand and participatory, value-creating, sustainable open data ecosystems on the other hand. The literature reveals that the main characteristics of value-creating, sustainable open data ecosystems are user-drivenness, inclusiveness, circularity, and skill-based. Our comparative case study of five open data systems in various application domains and countries highlighted that none of these systems are real open data ecosystems: they often do not balance open data supply and demand, exclude specific user groups and domains, are linear, and lack skill-training. We elaborate on a research agenda that discusses how research should address the challenge of making open data ecosystems more value-generating and sustainable.

The European Network of Living Labs has been established as one platform for collaborative and co-creative innovation, where users are involved in and contribute to the innovation process. However, what are current practices regarding user-driven open innovation? A review on how existing Living Labs in Europe have implemented the user as co-creator approach across the different stages of product and service innovation showed an emphasis on the Lab part, i.e., a predominant use of traditional methods, but less so on the Living part, i.e., methods of participation and co-creation. In this article, we illustrate how current methods stressing participation and co-creation can be deployed to strengthen current Living lab practices. We conclude with a discussion on the results and challenges to practice co-creation in practice.