Urban Labs: A Critical Perspective on Urban Laboratization Practices

• In Event: Landscapes of Urban Laboratization: Governing the City Through Labs

Abstract

Experimentation is increasingly seen as an appealing mode of city governance. Policy makers collaborate with local initiatives in addressing urban issues. In this paper we show how this emerging mode of city governance is being done through laboratization (Guggenheim 2012) practices. The rise of living, urban, fab and test labs (Geenhuizen 2012; Sauer 2013) is forming new landscapes of urban laboratization. These experimental territories become a breeding ground for innovation-driven expectations for the future, attracting a variety of actors. However, there is a peculiar disconnect between form and function in these experimental practices, where an assumption of knowledge production is deeply embedded within political, economic and social imaginations.
This paper examines how urban landscapes operate through laboratization and unpacks their assumptions, revealing the political consequences inherent in experimental territories. This is done by analyzing several urban labs in the Netherlands, where a context of polder politics produces solution-based, practice-oriented ‘tame’ innovation. We show how political territories and innovation are highly contextual and co-produced (Jasanoff 2004) through urban laboratization. Using ethnographic data we argue for a critical stance toward such territories and their politics (Karvonen and van Heur 2014). To understand the co-production of innovation and political landscapes, we need to unravel the assumption that experimental territories are by default places of knowledge production and instead, examine how this assumption matters. Our analysis shows knowledge production to be a by-product, rather than a goal for urban labs, where doing is prioritized over learning, reflexivity is scarce and economic interests abundant.

References

Geenhuizen, M. (2012). “From ivory tower to living lab: accelerating the use of university knowledge.” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 31. 1115-1132

Guggenheim, M. (2012). “Laboratizing and de-laboratizing the world: changing sociological concepts for places of knowledge production.” History of the Human Sciences 25(1), 99-118

Jasanoff, S. (2004). States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order. London: Routledge.

Karvonen, A. and B. van Heur (2014). “Urban Laboratoryies: Experiments in Reworking Cities.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 (2), 379-392

Sauer, S. (2013). User innovativeness in Living Laboratories. Everyday user
improvisations with ICTs as a source of innovation. Enschede: University of
Twente.

Authors

• Sabrina Huizenga, Erasmus University Rotterdam

• Dara Ivanova, Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management