What are the roles and impacts that Living Labs play in increasing civic resilience and supporting ecological transition in different contexts and at different scales?

This special issue examines how living labs (LLs) build capacity among stakeholders, reshape spaces, and influence governance to support civic resilience and ecological transition.

An LL is a real-world environment where research, innovative products or services are tested and co-developed with everyday participants in a collaborative setting. In the last decade, the LL methodology has become a key method for conducting research by engaging with ecological transition. LLs offer the possibility of connecting researchers and citizens, engaging them in collective action to identify common needs, develop collaborative methods to respond to these needs and share methods for wider implementation. LLs can be a means of expanding the capacity of citizens to engage in processes of change and increased civic resilience.

Guest editors: Nicola Antaki, Doina Petrescu, Vera Marin

The various roles of LLs are examined for how they empower new and existing actors, mediate between diverse stakeholders, and foster bottom-up agency for change. LLs can provide the social, institutional and material groundwork for future change in the built environment. This special issue underscores LLs’ contribution to governance innovation, particularly engagement that brings together public authorities, industry, academia and civil society. By catalysing policy learning and multi-actor coordination, LLs can influence how transitions are organised and implemented.

LLs can be called ‘agents for change’ because they have the potential to tangibly reshape capacities, relations, spaces and systems, yielding documented transformations. They demonstrate 'change' in stakeholder capacity-building; bottom-up agency; diversification of governance; and spatial activation. Individually and collectively, papers in this special issue show that LLs can be agents of change by offering opportunities for developing civic agency, transforming space and testing/proposing modes of governance adaptation.

The special issue contributes new knowledge in terms of roles and relationships, spatial change and governance: the capacity for change with a focus on actors, roles and methods, key LL typologies; means of evaluation; and processes inside of / generated by LLs.

Table of contents

Living labs as ‘agents for change’ [editorial]
N. Antaki, D. Petrescu & V. Marin

Researchers’ shifting roles in living labs for knowledge co-production
C.-C. Dobre & G. Faldi

The importance of multi-roles and code-switching in living labs
H. Noller & A. Tarik

Mediation roles and ecologies within resilience-focused urban living labs
N. Antaki, D. Petrescu, M. Schalk, E. Brandao, D. Calciu & V. Marin

Co-curation as civic practice in community engagement
Z. Li, M. Sunikka-Blank, R. Purohit & F. Samuel

Youth engagement in urban living labs: tools, methods and pedagogies
N. Charalambous, C. Panayi, C. Mady, T. Augustinčić & D. Berc

A living lab approach to co-designing climate adaptation strategies
M. K. Barati & S. Bankaru-Swamy

Co-learning in living labs: nurturing civic agency and resilience
A. Belfield

Placemaking living lab: creating resilient social and spatial infrastructure
M. Dodd, N. Madabhushi & R. Lees

Urban rooms and the expanded ecology of urban living labs
E. Akbil & C. Butterworth

Expanding the framework of urban living labs using grassroots methods
T. Ahmed, I. Delsante & L. Migliavacca

Living labs: a systematic review of success parameters and outcomes
J. M. Müller

Circularity at the neighbourhood scale: co-creative living lab lessons
J. Honsa, A. Versele, T. Van de Kerckhove, & C. Piccardo

Urban living labs: relationality between institutions and local circularity
P. Palo, M. Adelfio, J. Lundin & E. Brandão

A public theatre as a living lab to create resilience
A. Apostu & M. Drăghici

Co-creating interventions to prevent mosquito-borne disease transmission in hospitals
O. Sloan Wood, E. Lupenza, D. M. Agnello, J. B. Knudsen, M. Msellem, K. L. Schiøler & F. Saleh

Living labs: epistemic modelling, temporariness and land value
J. Clossick, T. Khonsari & U. Steven

Living knowledge labs: creating community and inclusive nature-based solutions
J. L. Fernández-Pacheco Sáez, I. Rasskin-Gutman, N. Martín-Bermúdez & A. Pérez-del-Campo

Co-creating justice in housing energy transitions through local living labs
D. Ricci, C. Leiwakabessy, S. van Wieringen, P. de Koning & T. Konstantinou

Increasing civic resilience in urban living labs: city authorities’ roles
E. Alatalo, M. Laine, & M. Kyrönviita

Positive energy districts and energy communities: how living labs create value
E. Malakhatka, O. Shafqat, A. Sandoff & L. Thuvander

Co-creating urban transformation: a stakeholder analysis for Germany’s heat transition
P. Heger, C. Bieber, M. Hendawy & A. Shooshtari

Living laboratories and building testing labs: enabling climate change adaptation
J. Hugo & M. Farhadian