Global crises on biodiversity and social cohesion are looming. A pilot project in an Alpine NUTS2 region of the European Union translated these large-scale challenges into a real-world local activity involving more than 100 volunteers from the public, political, private, civic, and science spheres over 30 months. Inspired by the real-world laboratory (RwL) method, the “Citizen Biotopes” pilot in Tyrol, Austria, set out to strengthen native biodiversity in inhabited areas while fostering transdisciplinary research and learning, connectedness with nature, and a sense of community across sectors. Leading this pilot from 2023 to 2025, the regional environment agency empowered and engaged participants from civil society, municipalities, farms, businesses and science. Across the region, six local action groups were formed to restore and rewild public spaces such as street islands. In several seasons, participants co-produced 38 unique native plant habitats, harvesting seed from donor meadows, tending plants, and recording species observations. Natural scientists and experienced stakeholder engagement experts and social scientists serviced participants with knowledge and Know-how. The results are promising. Empirical, longitudinal research indicates participants’ appreciation for the blend of hands-on science-informed biodiversity care with learning and community building. Biodiversity literacy and a sense of agency increased significantly over the course of the project. The pilot suggests biodiversity as a promising exploratory theme for RwLs and considers the RwL methodology suitable for strengthening native biodiversity. Exemplifying how RwLs can catalyse local sustainability transitions by integrating transdisciplinary learning and practice, the Citizen Biotopes pilot intends to inspire further research and replication especially at the NUTS2 regional scale. Promote local cross-sectoral contact and co-production to advance both native biodiversity and social cohesion. Accompany cross-sectoral local action groups for biodiversity by both natural scientists and stakeholder engagement specialists. Measure impact on both biodiversity indicators and cross-sectoral learning and community effects. Introduce local biodiversity management in the curricula of municipal officials and building yards. Prototype real-world laboratories (RwLs) on native biodiversity in NUTS2 regions, inspired by the Citizen Biotopes approach.
Increased focus on collaborative change-making in Living Labs creates a need to better understand how knowledge co-production enables experimental investigation of and engagement with sustainability challenges. Tracing how knowledge co-production in Living Labs supports learning processes beyond local contexts is equally important. This study uses a multiple-step reflection process to compare four workshop series about improving water and landscape governance within Living Labs in Sweden, Germany, Finland, and Latvia. Drawing on reflective diaries, interviews with case leaders, and a joint workshop for data collection, we investigate how specific framings of these knowledge co-production processes affect actors’ commitment to join a workshop series. We also compare the roles of actor selection and process design for co-producing context-specific knowledge, nurturing shared understandings, and developing pathways forward. Our findings show that framing elements such as the sustainability problem addressed, links to collaborative structures or networks, and approach to long-term engagement determine actors’ commitment to join and participate in workshops. We argue that actor selection should strike a balance between overly similar interests and entrenched positions while ensuring breadth and depth of knowledge. Moving from understanding the problem towards developing pathways forward, providing guidance and direction while ensuring open-endedness, and centering activities for relating to others and place can support processes of connecting knowledges and developing feasible strategies with high implementation potential. We conclude that investing in reflective practice to transparently discuss processes and outcomes of knowledge co-production remains essential for both conceiving and conducting societally relevant research in Living Labs. Living Labs present interesting cases for comparing processes and outcomes of knowledge co-production Problem framing, actor selection, and process design determine success of knowledge co-production Reflective practice is essential for embedding societally relevant research in Living Labs • Ensure long-term commitment and sustained funding for engagement with local actors in Living Labs • Balance interests of local actors and researchers throughout the project • Invite participants from different sectors with complementary expertise and experience • Support participants in connecting with others and place to develop locally relevant and contextual strategies • Invest in reflective practice to evaluate and improve knowledge co-production in Living Labs
The emergence of mission-oriented climate policy marks an important shift from traditional environmental governance towards transformative societal change. Yet while missions explicitly seek systemic transformation, the conceptual foundations informing many mission policies remain rooted in relatively narrow understandings of change. They often privilege innovation, experimentation, coordination, and measurable targets, while paying less attention to the political, institutional, relational, and contested dynamics that transformation scholars identify as central to urban change. Drawing on empirical evidence from Swedish frontrunner cities participating in the EU Cities Mission, this perspective argues that mission-oriented approaches would benefit from engaging more systematically with contemporary urban transformation research. While mission approaches emphasise strategic direction and policy coordination, transformation research highlights the importance of local practices, learning processes, and the socio-material conditions shaping implementation. By more systematically integrating these insights, mission-oriented approaches can enhance their sensitivity to context, improve their capacity to account for uncertainty and resistance, and support more adaptive and reflexive forms of governance. This, in turn, could increase the effectiveness of mission-oriented policies in translating ambitious goals into grounded and sustained transformation processes. Specifically, we outline several dimensions of transformation – including institutional and structural, power and politics, as well as relational and adaptive dimensions – that could be improved. We conclude that integrating these perspectives could strengthen both the analytical foundations and practical implementation of mission-oriented climate policy. Greater attention needs to be placed on linking missions to structural change. Cities need tools to navigate conflicting priorities through approaches that recognize power and politics. Cities require greater relational and adaptive capacities to mobilize informal networks, build legitimacy across diverse actors, and work with uncertainty.
Urban warfare remains a key blind spot in conventional planning paradigms, with cities exposed to cascading systemic collapse. In this research, we present AI-powered war gaming as an innovative method for simulating adversarial scenarios, ranging from attacks on infrastructure to mass displacement, and for strengthening urban resilience. Taking Mosul, Iraq, as a case study, we create a digital twin of the city and use agent-based modeling and adversarial AI to stress-test its post-war reconstruction. Experiments demonstrate that informal social networks (e.g. markets) outperform formal systems at crisis response, and that modular infrastructure design can reduce single-point vulnerabilities by 35–40
Abstract In the face of multiple crises municipalities are confronted with complex transformations that challenge established modes of planning. In the absence of adaptive, integrative, and reflexive tools, they turn towards communicative and experimental formats. Rather than representing a paradigmatic shift, these formats function as provisional responses to institutional and epistemic gaps. While they are often associated with collaborative learning, innovation, and open-ended knowledge production, their proliferation can also be understood as symptomatic of the limited capacity of conventional, technocratic planning approaches to address contemporary urban challenges. Despite the innovative character and reported success of such experiments, empirical scholarship indicates that these formats are susceptible to reproducing post-political conditions: they can depoliticize conflicts, privilege expert knowledge over that of citizens, and stabilize existing power relations, thereby reinforcing dominant social orders. In this Perspective we draw on Jacques Rancière’s theoretical thoughts to conceptualize urban experiments as sites where the Distribution of the Sensible and thus the prevailing social order can be either stabilized or disrupted. We show that experiments are inherently ambivalent: they can conceal contestation and uphold existing agendas, yet they can also activate processes of political subjectivation and render alternative urban imaginaries visible. We argue that realizing this potential requires recognizing citizens as political subjects, allowing for open-ended conflicts, avoiding pre-defined outcomes, and providing resources for sustained engagement. Transforming urban experiments into arenas for genuine democratic negotiation entails a reconfiguration of project logics, participatory arrangements, and institutional support structures to explicit embrace contestation.
