EmbedterLabs
The EmbedterLabs project seeks to understand:
- how to better translate and embed into policy the lessons learned from sustainable mobility infrastructure experiments, and,
- how to shape these experiments to better inform broader learning processes in just and sustainable urban transitions.
The UM team—consisting of Dr. Marc Dijk, Dr. Anique Hommels, and Dr. Denver Vale Nixon—will focus primarily on sustainable mobility infrastructural experiments in Maastricht. The project is funded by NWO/ JPI Urban Europe.
Urban Living Labs (ULLs) are on-the-ground experiments that attempt to innovate physical and social infrastructures in support of socially just and environmentally sustainable urban transformations. More simply, they test ideas for positive changes in the urban environment in the streets themselves. These ‘in situ’ trials give the public an opportunity to try out and ‘try on’ potential changes in their city’s environments.
However, a major shortcoming in contemporary urban planning is that the lessons learned from ULLs commonly fail to translate into city-wide policies and urban transformations, in part because of their context specificity. This unfortunately leaves them with limited impact.
To attend to this shortcoming, EmbedterLabs will investigate past and present ULL sustainable mobility experiments in Maastricht, Stockholm, and Gdansk using both retrospective analyses and action research that includes new co-creation experiments. Action research and co-creation mean that the researchers and variety of stakeholders, including the public, are involved in the experiments from conception to completion. Conclusions from this investigation will inform the design of a new approach to urban experiments. This novel approach will lubricate the policy integration of lessons learned from ULLs by preparing otherwise very niche experiments to better speak to broader policy. In turn, better embedding of these lessons in policy increases societal capacity for broader sustainable transformation.
EmbedterLabs is an international collaboration funded through NWO/ JPI Urban Europe and coordinated by Maastricht University. The project responds to the ERA-Net Urban Transformation Capacities scheme. EmbedterLab’s partner universities and public sector institutions are the Gdansk University of Technology, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Uppsala University, Lund University and the municipalities of Maastricht, Stockholm, and Gdansk. NGO, quasi-governmental and private sector collaborators include Maastricht Bereikbaar, Community of Gdansk Foundation, Olivia Business Centre, and SWECO.
The Maastricht University (MU) team consists of Dr. Marc Dijk and Dr. Denver Vale Nixon from the Maastricht Sustainability Institute (MSI) and Dr. Anique Hommels from the Department of Science, Technology and Society Studies (MUSTS) of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. The MU team will focus primarily on sustainable mobility infrastructural experiments in Maastricht.
The project will reach completion in 2025.
For more information please contact either Dr. Denver Vale Nixon ( /denver.nixon@maastrichtuniversity.nl ) or Dr. Marc Dijk ( /m.dijk@maastrichtuniversity.nl ).