Trials and Tribulations: Problematizing the City through/as Urban Experimentation

Abstract

This review article addresses the phenomenon of urban experimentation. Urban experimentation has achieved notable significance in recent years. Viewing the city as a laboratory for field‐testing new practices, or as a setting for experimental sites, has earned significant cache when it comes to contemporary urban issues such as governance reform, urban sustainability and economic development. In this regard, urban experiments are an important vehicle for not only understanding the city but also transforming it. This article reviews how experimentation has been defined teasing out some basic concepts before examining how experimentation has been broadly applied across urban studies. The paper then draws attention to three realms of urban development – social, economic, and sustainability – and asks how experimentation in these realms acts as a mode of problematization that summons particular forms of governance, the implications of which are summarized.

Unpacking the Formation of Favourable Environments for Urban Experimentation: The Case of the Bristol Energy Scene

“…Urban experiments are being mobilised not merely to study the city but also to probe diverse urban futures, harness innovations to transform the city and its various sociotechnical systems [4][5][6] and contribute to developing the capacities required for transformation [7]. Proponents of urban experimentation have devised and implemented a variety of experimental spaces, such as urban living laboratories, transition arenas, platforms, and experimental districts, which are the object of a thriving body of literature [8][9][10][11][12]. While the literature on urban experimentation has emphasised deliberate efforts to construct experimental spaces, the question of how a particular place or city becomes a favourable environment for experimentation with sustainability has hardly been asked.…”

Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability Transitions, Analysing Multiplicity

“…In many ways, the city has, 'arguably, always been experimental' in the ways that urban authorities have regularly 'tested' urban knowledge in processes of attempting to improve the city [41] (p. 429). The bringing together of urban governance experimentation and socio-technical experimentation is about purposively embedding something new in a place-even if that something is well-established elsewhere-and how that contributes to efforts to transform the city.…”

Shared technology making in neoliberal ruins

“…Large infrastru)tural proje)ts that engineer 'smarts, 'data-drivens and 'experimentals )ites are ofen bla)k-boxed due to the expert knowledge, spe)ialist equipment, and the polit)al and fnan)ial investments of the state required for su)h proje)ts, despite the )elebratory )laims and visions of the )o-produ)ton of the )ites with )itiens (Evans et al, 2016;Marvin et al, 2016). Meanwhile, there have been ongoing attempts of developing pra)t)es, spa)es and pra)ttoners to transform urban governan)e into one that is transparent, informed by diverse knowledges and perspe)tve and led by )itiens.…”

“…Lo)al )ommunites or )ity administratons are en)ouraged by organisers to part)ipate in these initatves so that innovatons are developed from the working (and failure) of urban everyday life and (non-)expert knowledges. Furthermore, in the re)ent revision of smart urbanism, ')itien-)entri)s approa)hes are preferred in setng up urban living labs, )ivi) ha)king initatves or innovaton distri)ts to engineer so)ially and environmentally sustainable ways of urban living (Cardullo and Kit)hin, 2018;Cowley et al, 2017;Evans, 2016;Vanolo, 2016).…”