A Review of an Urban Living Lab Initiative

Abstract

In 2016 the city of Turin, Italy, launched the Torino Living Lab initiative. By using the urban Living Lab approach, with firms, public bodies, universities, and communities collaborating to co-create innovation, Turin aims to encourage, attract, and foster a growing and inclusive innovation environment. This article describes the efforts that Turin has made to design the initiative and presents a structured methodology to assess its results. The expectations and objectives of the initiative's utilizers and the characteristics, impressions, habits, and behaviors of the citizens were collected before the initiative through a series of semi-structured interviews and a survey. By comparing the obtained results with similar post-mortem measurements, it is possible to assess the success of the initiative and evaluate its impacts. Finally, this study present interesting policy takeaways for cities wanting to implement urban Living Labs and identify best practices for their design, implementation, and management.

Living Labs Experiences in Turkey: Examples of Başakşehi̇r and Bodrum

“…The living labs strategy gives cities access to relatively affordable sources of creative ideas while also engaging residents and communities and fostering social innovation. In fact, governments may help residents, communities, and private groups to develop creative solutions that are centered on the needs of the city and provide a bypass for the traditional public procurement process, which is frequently more onerous and expensive (Tanda & De Marco, 2021).…”