Table 1
Summary of the methodological features of three different living labs (LLs).
| DIMENSION | URBAN LIVING LABS (ULLs) (MAINSTREAM) | SOCIALLY ORIENTED URBAN LIVING LABS (SOULLs) (von Wirth et al. 2019) | GRASSROOTS URBAN LABS (GULs) (Sager 2024) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership and governance | Institution-led (municipality/university/industry); formal governance | Institution supported with stronger social orientation; hybrid governance | Citizen-led, informal governance; ecopolitical/insurgent orientation |
| Setting of experimentation | Designated LL sites, pilots, living test beds | Community programmes, social innovation pilots, neighbourhood labs | Everyday practices; contested/alternative spaces; prefigurative action |
| Primary designs | Structured LL phases (co-creation → prototyping → evaluation → scaling) (Steen & van Bueren 2017); user studies; randomised controlled trial (RCT)/quasi-experimental where feasible | Participatory action research; social impact prototyping; LL cycles with socially targeted criteria | Ethnography, embedded/participatory action research; co-design as commoning; situated/counter-mapping; process tracing of insurgent change |
| Typical tools | Stakeholder workshops; service prototyping; test-bed instrumentation; key performance indicator (KPI) dashboards; cost–benefit/policy evaluation | Community charrettes; social needs assessment; capability mapping; equity-focused evaluation rubrics | Participant observation; governance diaries; repertoire analysis of commoning practices; gift-economy/resource flow mapping; boundary objects (e.g. community toolkits); conflict and actor mapping |
| Evidence and evaluation | Outputs/outcomes: performance, adoption, policy integration; mixed-methods with stronger formal metrics | Social outcomes: inclusion, wellbeing, participation; mixed-methods with equity indicators | Mechanisms: empowerment, autonomy, solidarity, diffusion; narrative and process evidence; reflexive accounts |
| Ethics/positionality | Institutional ethics/review protocols; intellectual property (IP)/data governance | As for ULLs, plus explicit safeguards for vulnerable groups | Strong reflexivity; reciprocity; co-ownership of data/artefacts |
| Scalability/diffusion | Standardisation, policy uptake, vendor ecosystems | Programmatic scaling via social policy and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) | Peer-to-peer replication; federated commons; toolkits as boundary objects |
Figure 1
Participatory workshops of the Commoning Kirklees (CK) toolkit.
Figure 2
Stages of the Commoning Kirklees (CK) project and toolkit formation and testing, with an indication of the key stakeholders involved.
Source: Ahmed & Delsante (2022).