Smarter Labs

Funding: Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe
Amount of Funding: € 1.387.042,-
Duration: 03/2016 - 03/2019
Lead partner: Maastricht University
Partners: City of Maastricht, Maastricht Bereikbaar, Antea Group; Vrije Universiteit Brussel – COSMOPOLIS, Brusselse Raad voor het Leefmilieu; University of Graz – RCE Graz-Styria, City of Graz; University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, City of Bellinzona, Pro Velo Ticino
Lead: Petra Wlasak, MA MSc PhD

Description:

„Living labs“ are a powerful tool to address current challenges in city planning and bring together various stakeholders in a participatory process. While there are positive experiences with living labs, the concept also bears weaknesses, such as problems with upscaling or not involving certain social groups sufficiently. The objective of the SmarterLabs project was to investigate these two risks in the four partner cities of Bellinzona, Brussels, Maastricht, and Graz. At first information of past mobility projects was collected (ex-ante diagnosis) and afterwards new living labs were carefully set up in order to explicitly address the two risk factors. As a result, there guidelines on how to best establish a living lab with clear instructions for all possible stakeholders involved were developed. To guarantee broad applicability of the concept, three workshops in different regional contexts (Santander, Istanbul and Helsinki) were conducted, allowing it to further refine the living lab approach.

All results are available on the SmarterLabs website.