Submissions are now open for the forthcoming Special Issue of Urban Design International (Springer Nature), titled Urban Living Labs and New Epistemologies of Urban Design, with manuscripts due on 31 March 2026.Edited by Nadia Charalambous (Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus, Cyprus), Stefania Ragozino (National Research Council, Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development, Italy), and Tihomir Viderman (BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany), this Special Issue examines the evolving role of Urban Living Labs (ULLs) as experimental, participatory, and transdisciplinary spaces that are reshaping contemporary urban design. By situating ULLs as critical sites where governance, ethics, pedagogy, methodology, and knowledge co-production converge, the issue aims to deepen theoretical and methodological understanding of their contribution to urban futures.Thematic framework: The Urban Living Labs (ULLs) indicate a deeper reconfiguration of how urban space is imagined and co-produced. Design practice is asked to create solutions for complex socio-spatial challenges, including climate change, structural transitions, and socio-spatial inequalities, while engaging with emerging debates on intergenerational justice, more-than-human relations, and more-than-representational approaches. At the same time, participation, experimentation, and co-creation have become imperatives in urban governance, framed as alternatives to negatively perceived technocratic or centralized planning (Bulkeley et al., 2016). ULLs concentrate these requirements as sites where administrations, academia, representatives of organised interest, and publics together co-create responses to urban challenges across the range of inter- and transdisciplinary themes (Marvin et al., 2018). Much of the literature emphasizes practical outputs of ULLs, whether in climate adaptation, mobility, or digital and social innovation (von Wirth et al., 2019; Steen and van Bueren, 2017; Voytenko et al., 2016). Yet, ULLs also entail many ambivalences and critical aspects across categories of governance, ethics, pedagogy, methodology, and knowledge co-production.
Governance: ULLs have been promoted as flexible collaborations that can innovate beyond traditional planning (Bulkeley et al., 2016). Their institutional position, however, is unstable: some are embedded in governance structures, while others remain peripheral and project-based experiments with little long-term impact (von Wirth et al., 2019). They promise to democratize decision-making, but they can also fragment responsibility and dilute accountability.
Ethics: Participation is uneven and power relations persist. ULLs can repackage engagement while leaving structural hierarchies intact (Menny et al., 2018). Whose input counts, and whose voices are sidelined? Young people, for example, are directly affected by long-term urban decisions yet remain structurally excluded from planning processes (Matthews, 2001; Bruselius-Jensen et al., 2022). ULLs thus raise ethical questions around representation, intergenerational concerns, and spatial justice.
Pedagogy: Higher education establishes ULLs to embed real-world engagement into curricula (Karvonen and van Heur, 2014). Through experiential and reflexive learning ULLs can cultivate civic responsibility and equip students with skills for navigating plural urban realities. At the same time, they risk instrumentalization: students and citizens may be positioned less as co-producers of knowledge than as participants enlisted to legitimise existing power structures.
Methodology: ULLs are sites of experimentation with tools and processes—from participatory mapping and storytelling to prototyping and serious games (Voytenko et al., 2016; Steen and van Bueren, 2017). Their flexibility is a strength, but risks ‘toolism’ where methods are applied without context sensitivity or where innovation becomes an end in itself. Evaluation remains a challenge: how can modest, process-driven outcomes be assessed rigorously (Hölscher et al., 2019)?
Knowledge (co-)production: ULLs are frequently invoked as ‘real-world laboratories’ (Marvin et al., 2018) and mutual learning laboratories (Puerari et al., 2018), yet their epistemological contribution remains unsettled. Do they advance relational and situated understandings of design, or are they absorbed into policy discourse as managerial tools for innovation (Bulkeley et al., 2019)? Critical work has begun to question the assumptions that structure knowledge in ULLs and the forms of epistemic exclusion they may reproduce (Baxter, 2022).
Aims: This Special Issue aims to explore how ULLs transform the epistemology of urban design. It invites contributions that analyze ULLs as contested and situated arenas where governance, ethics, pedagogy, methods, and knowledge production converge. Each of these fields highlights both the possibilities and the tensions inherent in urban futures created within ULLs. By treating ULLs not only as sites of urban innovation but also as sites of urban design scholarship, this issue aims at a critical understanding of the role of ULLs in shaping the future of cities. Specifically, this Special Issue seeks to:
1) Examine how ULLs both emerge from and contribute to shifts in urban governance. As products of changing governance structures, how do they in turn reshape decision-making, accountability, and the balance between institutional and project-based forms of planning?
2) Explore the ethical tensions as ULLs navigate the field between opening space for new voices and reinforcing existing hierarchies. How do ULLs respond to demands for inclusion and justice and negotiate participation?
3) Assess the role of ULLs in reconfiguring how urban design is taught and learned. How do they navigate the tension field at the intersection of universities and cities, as they cultivate reflexivity, collaboration, and civic capacity, while also risking instrumentalisation?
4) Analyze how ULLs promote experimentation with participatory tools and processes. How can methodological innovation be balanced with critical assessment of impact?
5) Reflect on how ULLs can advance situated and relational understandings of urban design, yet their alignment with managerial discourses risks privileging certain forms of expertise over others. How can ULLs open space for more plural and contested modes of knowledge production?
By drawing these threads together, the issue aims to reposition ULLs from being seen primarily as policy innovations to being understood as critical sites of urban design scholarship. Contributions will move beyond descriptive accounts, offering conceptual clarity, methodological innovation, and critical insight into the governance, ethics, pedagogy, and theory of urban design in the 21st century.
Editors
Nadia Charalambous, Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus; Charalambous.nadia@ucy.ac.cy
Stefania Ragozino, National Research Council, Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development; s.ragozino@iriss.cnr.it
Tihomir Viderman, BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg; viderman@b-tu.de
Deadline for submission: 31 March 2026
References
Baxter, J.-S. (2022) From Urban Living Labs Towards Critical Spatial Design: Decolonising Knowledge in Urban Design and Planning Using Critical Reflexivity. Nordic Journal of Urban Studies 2(2), 124-140.
Bruselius-Jensen, M., Pitti, I., & Tisdall, K. (eds.) (2022). Young People’s Participation: Revisiting Youth and Inequalities in Europe. Policy Press.
Bulkeley, H., Coenen, L., Frantzeskaki, N., Hartmann, C., Kronsell, A., Mai, L., Marvin, S., McCormick, K., van Steenbergen, F., & Voytenko Palgan, Y. (2016). Urban living labs: Governing urban sustainability transitions. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 22, 13–17.
Bulkeley, H., Marvin, S., Palgan, Y. V., McCormick, K., Breitfuss-Loidl, M., Mai, L., & Voytenko Palgan, Y. (2019). Urban living laboratories: Conducting the experimental city? European Urban and Regional Studies, 26(4), 317–335.
Hölscher, K., Frantzeskaki, N., McPhearson, T., & Loorbach, D. (2019). Transition governance in the urban century. Environmental Science & Policy, 85, 19–30.
Karvonen, A., & van Heur, B. (2014). Urban laboratories: Experiments in reworking cities.
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38(2), 379–392.
Matthews, H. (2001). Citizenship, youth councils and young people’s participation. Journal of Youth Studies, 4(3), 299–318.
Menny, M., Voytenko Palgan, Y., & McCormick, K. (2018). Urban living labs and the role of users in co-creation. GAIA – Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 27(S1), 68–77.
Marvin, S., Bulkeley, H., Mai, L., McCormick, K., & Palgan, Y. V. (eds.) (2018). Urban Living Labs: Experimenting with City Futures. Routledge.
Puerari, E., De Koning, J. I., Von Wirth, T., Karré, P. M., Mulder, I. J., & Loorbach, D. A. (2018). Co-creation dynamics in urban living labs. Sustainability, 10(6), 1893.
Sachs Olsen, C., & van Hulst, M. (2023). Reimagining Urban Living Labs: Enter the Urban Drama Lab. Urban Studies, 61(6), 991-1012.
Steen, K., & van Bueren, E. (2017). The defining characteristics of urban living labs. Technology Innovation Management Review, 7(7), 21–33.
von Wirth, T., Fuenfschilling, L., Frantzeskaki, N., & Coenen, L. (2019). Impacts of urban living labs on sustainability transitions: mechanisms and strategies for systemic change. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 28, 32–53.
Voytenko, Y., McCormick, K., Evans, J., & Schliwa, G. (2016). Urban living labs: A new approach to co-creating sustainable urban futures. Journal of Cleaner Production, 123, 45– 54.
Per informazioni:
Stefania Ragozino
CNR – Istituto di Ricerca su Innovazione e Servizi per lo Sviluppo
s.ragozino@iriss.cnr.it
