Learning By Transacting: Making, Learning And Sharing Knowledge In The ‘Cities Of The Future’ Laboratory

• In Event: Beyond Boundary Objects and Immutable Mobiles - New Ways of Thinking about the Movement of Knowledge III: Co-Production of Knowledge

Abstract

Urban laboratories are often used as a strategy to produce innovative knowledge to improve the sustainability of cities. In this presentation, I show how the concept of ‘the learning economy’ (Lundvall & Johnson, 1994) can be used to account for how these laboratories make and share knowledge to address sustainability concerns. A learning economy comprises what I call ‘learning by transacting’. Learning by transacting denotes the practices by which actors exchange, or transact, ideas and relevant experiences in stronger or weaker relations. By contrast to concepts of ‘trading’ and ‘exchange’, learning by transacting points to a goal-oriented type of knowledge sharing, in which learning is a central aspect of the process.

In my empirical study, a multi-actor urban program called Cities of the Future (CoF), the actors transacted visions, frames, narratives, best designs and people to improve the sustainability in Norwegian cities. I call the CoF program a ‘meta urban laboratory’ because it coordinated and facilitated learning by transacting between what I see as more ‘classic’ urban laboratories in CoF, organized as 45 pilot projects. The CoF program tried to provide a learning economy for the sustainability of Norwegian cities.

My data consist of 25 interviews, one month of shadowing two planning agencies, document and newspaper analysis. I analyzed data through a sociomaterial and practice-based approach to learning, such as the social learning of technology framework.

Author

• Lina Ingeborgrud