1. Introduction
Empowering youth1 as active agents in urban governance is essential for bridging short-term concerns with long-term development goals (Bruselius-Jensen et al. 2021). Although young people have the right to participate in decision-making, traditional urban planning and policymaking processes often overlook their needs and aspirations, limiting their potential contributions. Formal structures, such as youth councils and national youth boards, aim to facilitate youth engagement, yet their implementation and impact remain uneven and inconsistent (Tisdall et al. 2014). Scholarship on youth participation has long emphasised that inclusion cannot be reduced to institutional representation alone. Beyond formalised mechanisms, effective participation requires creating situated and reflexive spaces where young people can articulate their lived experiences, develop civic competencies and challenge existing power relations (Matthews 2001; Bruselius-Jensen et al. 2022). Research further reveals persistent inequalities in access and influence: youth from marginalised socio-economic or ethnic backgrounds are often underrepresented, while participation processes tend to privilege those already socially or educationally advantaged. These findings underscore the need for alternative arenas of engagement that allow diverse youth—across age, gender, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds—to negotiate power, test ideas and co-produce spatial knowledge.
Urban living labs (ULLs) have emerged as a promising framework for integrating youth perspectives into urban decision-making, also indicating a deeper reconfiguration of how urban space is imagined and co-produced. Design practice today is asked to address complex socio-spatial challenges—climate change, social inequality, structural transitions—while engaging with emerging debates on intergenerational justice, more-than-human relations and more-than-representational approaches. Within this shifting landscape, participation, experimentation and co-creation have become imperatives in urban governance, framed as alternatives to technocratic or centralised planning (Bulkeley et al. 2016). Conceived as real-life experimental environments, ULLs concentrate these imperatives as sites where citizens, experts, public authorities and private actors come together to co-create responses to urban challenges across inter- and transdisciplinary themes (Petrescu et al. 2022; Schliwa & McCormick 2016).
Early accounts portrayed living labs as innovation ecosystems (Eriksson et al. 2005), but subsequent scholarship reframed them as governance instruments for urban sustainability transitions (Evans & Karvonen 2014). Within these more critical perspectives, ULLs are not neutral testbeds but political spaces that shape whose knowledge is legitimised and whose futures are imagined (Karvonen & van Heur 2014; Baxter 2022). For youth, this means that participation in a ULL can be both empowering and precarious: a chance to act within real planning processes, yet still framed by adult-defined rules and institutional expectations.
While their formats range from incubators and hubs to neighbourhood-scale testbeds and city laboratories, ULLs share common features: real-life contextualisation, inclusive stakeholder involvement, iterative experimentation and learning-oriented governance (Voytenko et al. 2016; Marvin et al. 2018). Within these, contextuality and co-creation are key to genuine inclusion. Franz et al. (2015) demonstrate that labs succeed when they embed local narratives and socio-spatial realities rather than applying imported templates. Puerari et al. (2018) further trace how co-creation unfolds through negotiation among actors with unequal power and expertise—a dynamic particularly relevant when the ‘users’ are young people whose experiential knowledge often clashes with institutional norms. As such, ULLs provide an opportunity to rethink youth participation not as consultation but as collaborative experimentation in the making of urban space.
This experimental dimension has led scholars to describe ULLs as laboratories of transition and learning. McCormick & Hartmann (2017) situate them within a wider landscape of urban experimentation, where innovation, governance and pedagogy intersect. Sachs Olsen & van Hulst (2023) go further, describing them as urban drama labs: performative arenas where conflicting narratives of urban futures are enacted. These framings are crucial for youth-focused practices: they highlight how experimentation involves emotion, conflict and creativity, and how educationally structured labs can nurture reflective agency rather than mere compliance. Baxter (2022) similarly advocates a critical spatial design approach, urging reflexivity and the decolonisation of knowledge so that young participants can challenge, not simply reproduce, prevailing planning discourses.
In recent years, ULLs have gained prominence not only as platforms for innovation and governance but also as pedagogical tools within higher education institutions (HEIs). Increasingly, universities are repositioning themselves as civic actors within local governance networks, with ULLs bridging formal education with real-life urban contexts (Petrescu et al. 2022). ULLs blur the boundaries between research, teaching and public engagement, enabling HEIs to act not merely as knowledge providers but as urban actors engaged in the co-production of space. Through design–build and participatory studio environments, ULLs serve as pedagogical spaces for civic learning and co-creation, extending Schön’s (1983) notion of the reflective practitioner: learning through cycles of action and reflection in authentic settings. When students collaborate with communities and municipalities, they experience the city simultaneously as classroom and laboratory. This situated learning environment merges academic knowledge with experiential practice, fostering civic engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration and problem-solving skills essential for sustainable urban development. Yet, as Sachs Olsen & van Hulst (2023) caution, these pedagogical labs also reveal tensions between institutional aims and youth agency: their transformative potential depends on whether educational structures enable open-ended experimentation or constrain it within predefined outcomes.
Despite their expanding application, the methodological foundations of ULLs remain fragmented and inconsistent, as does research on their local implementation and effects. Scholars conceptualise ULLs variously as methodologies (Eriksson et al. 2005), environments (Ballon et al. 2005), governance systems (Bulkeley et al. 2016) or even political instruments of experimentation (Marvin et al. 2018). This conceptual diversity presents challenges for standardisation, evaluation and knowledge transfer. The success of ULLs depends on their ability to adapt to diverse local contexts and varying scales, from neighbourhood-based labs to transnational networks. However, the mainstreaming of ULLs as tools for sustainable urban transformation requires methodological consistency, scalability and replicability across cases.
The challenge becomes even sharper when participation involves young people, whose capacities, motivations and institutional positions vary widely, and whose participation is shaped by age-related power imbalances, marginalisation and institutional barriers. Research on transition governance emphasises that experimentation must be accompanied by reflexive evaluation to avoid depoliticising change (Hölscher et al. 2019). Yet, in many youth-related projects, assessments remain limited to quantitative indicators—numbers of participants or workshops—without addressing how youth experience the process or how their contributions influence decision-making.
Comparative and cross-contextual analyses are particularly scarce. Existing reviews reveal that ULLs differ not only in scale and governance but also in epistemological orientation—ranging from design thinking to action research or transition management (Voytenko et al. 2016; Marvin et al. 2018). Von Wirth et al. (2019) identify three mechanisms—learning, linking and embedding—through which labs influence systemic change, yet few studies explore how these mechanisms operate when the key participants are youth. Moreover, most analyses remain confined to single cases, limiting understanding of how methods are adapted across cultural and institutional contexts. The result is a fragmented picture of how ULLs actually foster, or fail to foster, long-term youth agency.
Huang & Thomas (2021) provide one of the few systematic overviews, reviewing 42 living-lab cases (15 of them urban). Their typology of participatory tools—ranging from structured interaction formats to design-led co-creation—offers a starting point for comparative analysis, but stops short of examining the rationale behind methodological choices or their contextual adaptation. For youth-centred practice, this omission is critical: tools that succeed with university students may falter with school pupils or marginalised youth groups unless carefully redesigned to address social, spatial and cultural differences.
Although this methodological typology illustrates diversity within ULLs, it also highlights a deeper issue: the lack of a systematic, comparative framework for applying and adapting these methods across varied territories and contexts. Most studies remain confined to individual case analyses, offering limited insight into their evaluation and research design choices and processes, and into how methodologies are adjusted to suit different places, cultures, social dynamics, institutional arrangements and governance models. Equally so, while confining their analysis to evaluation, most studies do not approach ULLs as productive research arenas, which can offer (if approached from a hybridised quantitative and qualitative approach) important insights into the dynamics of ULLs for youth subjectivities and local contexts, that go beyond descriptions of implementations. The complexity of working (and researching) across scales—ranging from small, community-based interventions to city-wide or multi-city initiatives—further complicates the transferability of methods and limits the ability to evaluate their broader applicability.
There is a pressing need for a systematic and comparative framework capable of guiding the adaptation of ULL methodologies to diverse territorial conditions. To address these gaps, the Participatory Skills for Urban Governance (PS-U-GO) project undertakes a multi-sited enquiry into the development of youth-oriented ULLs in four European cities. At its core is the creation of a methodological framework for youth-focused ULLs that is not only grounded in both quantitative and qualitative evaluation and research insights but also is adaptable to diverse territorial (primarily urban, but also suburban and rural) realities. By positioning youth as co-creators of urban change, and by embedding ULL methods within higher education curricula, the project aspires to cultivate civic and professional capacities among students while strengthening the pedagogical and civic roles of HEIs in urban governance ecosystems. Through this dual lens—of practice and pedagogy—PS-U-GO aims to contribute to a new generation of ULLs that are inclusive, scalable, and capable of producing transferable knowledge and long-term youth engagement in sustainable urban transformation.
The project’s methodological framework was constructed by applying an explorative, critical and collaborative approach. Grounded in a conceptual framework informed by the literature on ULLs’ methodologies, participatory governance and youth engagement (Panayi & Charalambous 2024), the project initially conducted an analysis of existing ULL cases previously developed by partner institutions across the four dimensions identified through the literature review: (1) contextualisation and real-life setting; (2) inclusive stakeholder participation and co-creation; (3) experimentation and evaluation; and (4) sustainability and impact (Panayi & Charalambous 2024).
Building on these insights, a flexible yet coherent ULL methodology was developed structured around three interlinked phases—design and initiation; operation; and evaluation and feedback—supported by adaptable tools and a shared monitoring and evaluation framework, accompanied by complementary fieldwork research. This approach aims to resolve the tension between context-specific adaptability and the need for methodological coherence across sites. In doing so, PS-U-GO addresses a central research question: How can ULL methodologies be developed to support meaningful youth agency and long-term sustainability in co-created urban interventions, be adaptable across diverse urban contexts and scales while maintaining coherence to facilitate replicability across contexts? Drawing on detailed internal documentation, project evaluation and preliminary fieldwork research data, and keeping in mind that the project is ongoing, this paper will discuss ways in which PS-U-GO has attempted to answer these questions within its iterative implementation-research loop.
2. Methods
The project methods combine research with applied framework development. To address the core research question, the methodological design unfolds in three interrelated stages:
A qualitative, multi-case analysis of existing ULLs was conducted to identify the methodological patterns, challenges and opportunities related to youth participation across diverse contexts.
Based on these findings, a structured yet adaptable youth-centred ULL methodology was co-developed and was piloted in four European cities.
Fieldwork research and evaluation of key stages of the ULLs implementation take place in an iterative manner.
This three-tiered approach enables both the grounding of PS-U-GO in real-world practice and the generation of a replicable model that supports youth agency, cross-contextual transferability and educational integration.
2.1 Comparative analysis of youth-oriented ULLs
The empirical foundation of PS-U-GO involved a multi-site comparative study of five ULLs: four previously implemented by partner organisations—MaLL (Palermo/Madonie, Italy), AUA (Brussels, Belgium), LP2 (Naples, Italy) and Latsia (Nicosia, Cyprus)—and one external case: the Lisbon Living Lab (Portugal) from the C3Places project. These cases were selected for their relevance to youth engagement, diversity of governance structures, geographical distribution and methodological diversity. The goal of this stage was to map and compare existing practices in youth-focused ULLs, identify methodological strengths and weaknesses, and extract transferable insights to inform a robust, adaptable and context-sensitive framework which could address issues of replicability and scalability of ULLs (Panayi & Charalambous 2024).
Semi-structured interviews conducted and transcribed with representatives from each partner organisation, and a structured questionnaire consisting of open-ended questions explored the strategic, operational and participatory dimensions of each ULL, capturing reflections on implementation challenges, successes and lessons learned. C3Places Lisbon was analysed through a literature review and desk-based analysis, enriching the comparative dimension and enabling triangulation. The collected data were analysed by bottom-up coding advanced by grounded theory methodological approaches (Charmaz 2011). A comparative summary mapped each ULL along the four dimensions revealing convergences and divergences, and highlighting key methodological principles to inform the development of a unified framework that balances coherence with contextual adaptability.
Across the five ULLs, local embeddedness emerged as a defining condition for meaningful and sustained youth engagement. While all labs were grounded in specific territorial contexts, their depth of connection to local networks varied: MaLL and LP2, rooted in long-standing community relations, fostered continuity and trust, whereas AUA and C3Places prioritised thematic mobility over place-based permanence, and Latsia required time to establish legitimacy within municipal structures. Deeply embedded labs demonstrated greater potential for long-term youth agency, underscoring the value of relational capital and trust-building as foundations for participation beyond tokenism.
Differences also appeared in how learning and reflection were structured. AUA and C3Places employed formal iterative cycles that supported adaptive learning, while MaLL and LP2 relied on informal feedback mechanisms integrated into community practice. Finally, sustainability was closely tied to institutional positioning: MaLL and LP2 aligned with enduring civic and regional agendas, while project-based models such as AUA and C3Places risked discontinuity. Ensuring intergenerational continuity thus depends on structural integration, community ownership and peer-led capacity-building mechanisms that embed ULLs within both governance and educational systems.
Together, these findings emphasise that while flexibility is essential, coherence in methodology—particularly in how learning, participation and evaluation are structured—is critical for transferability and sustained impact. These insights informed the development of the PS-U-GO ULL methodology, aligning it with both the realities of urban diversity and the imperative of pedagogical and civic integration.
2.2 Method development
2.2.1 Context
Within the PS-U-GO project, four ULLs are established in Naples, Palermo (both Italy), Cottbus (Germany), and Nicosia (Cyprus) to explore how young people can co-create more inclusive and sustainable urban environments. Each lab translates the project’s shared framework into a distinct territorial and institutional setting, engaging youth in processes of participatory design, civic learning and urban experimentation. While all four pursue the overarching goals of strengthening youth agency and linking education with local governance, their scopes and configurations of actors vary (Table 1).
Table 1
Overview of the Participatory Skills for Urban Governance (PS-U-GO) urban living lab (ULL) project.
| ULL | VISION | PRINCIPLES AND VALUES | SPATIAL SETTING | FORMAT | PARTICIPANTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naples (LP2) | Reclaim and democratise access to the sea as a public common; promote spatial justice, intergenerational responsibility and civic stewardship | Inclusivity, spatial justice, intergenerational responsibility and civic stewardship | Nomadic model engaging multiple sites | Participatory and non-formal engagement through open calls, workshops and community events | Youth from local communities, students, civic groups, researchers, Department of Architecture and municipal representatives |
| Palermo (MaLL) | Activate creative energies for a sustainable Madonie habitat through place-based learning, cultural innovation and ecological resilience | Place-based learning, cultural innovation and ecological resilience | Rural setting in the Madonie area; repurposed school with creative spaces serving 26 municipalities | Residency-based workshops and collaborative events connecting local and regional actors | Students, artists, local residents, cultural associations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), Fine Arts Academy (University of Palermo) and local authorities |
| Cottbus (CoCo) | Empower students to co-create inclusive urban environments through interdisciplinary and intergenerational collaboration | Interdisciplinary collaboration, experimentation and institutional learning | Central urban location offering high visibility and civic accessibility | Semester-based studio integrated into the university curriculum; adaptive stakeholder engagement co-defined by students | Students, academic staff, city agencies, cultural workers, NGOs and local associations |
| Nicosia (ULLοι Aglantzia) | Foster youth-led civic engagement and participatory design for inclusive public spaces, linking education with local governance | Youth leadership, participatory design, social inclusion and civic collaboration | Energy-efficient facility in a dense neighbourhood near Nicosia’s city centre | Fixed-site ULL connecting university, local schools and municipality through cross-sectoral workshops and co-creation sessions | Architecture students, high-school pupils, Youth Board of Cyprus, Youth Council, NGOs, Municipality of Nicosia and neighbourhood residents |
Naples (LP2) and Palermo (MaLL) evolved from long-standing community initiatives and cultural networks, giving them strong local legitimacy and continuity. The ULLs in Cottbus (CoCo) and Nicosia (ULLοι Aglantzia) are more tightly embedded in higher education structures, integrating participatory activities into design studios and academic curricula. Across sites, youth participation involves students, local youth groups, educators, municipal representatives, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and community organisations collaborating through workshops, fieldwork and co-design sessions. Academics frame and evaluate the process, while civic and institutional partners provide local knowledge, logistical support and pathways for implementation. These relationships take different forms: in Naples and Palermo, collaboration builds on pre-existing trust and shared civic values; in Cottbus and Nicosia, they emerge through iterative learning within academic contexts.
Across the four ULLs, the youth participants represented a diverse spectrum of age, background and experience including secondary-school students, university students, early-career professionals and members of local youth organisations with varying degrees of familiarity with participatory or design processes. Age ranges spanned from mid-teens to early 20s, reflecting different socio-economic and cultural contexts—from working-class neighbourhoods in Naples and rural communities in the Madonie to international student populations in Cottbus and multi-ethnic urban youth in Nicosia. Gender balance was actively pursued in all ULLs through the open calls and targeted outreach. Recognising this diversity was crucial for adapting tools, communication styles and facilitation methods to ensure equitable involvement, and to foreground how social, cultural and institutional differences shape youth agency within participatory experimentation.
2.2.2 ULL methodology
Building on the insights from the literature review and the comparative analysis, a unified yet adaptable ULL methodology designed to support youth participation and co-creation in diverse territorial contexts was then developed, structured around three interdependent phases: design and initiation; operation; and evaluation and feedback (Figure 1). Each phase includes core process steps, guiding principles and a curated menu of supporting toolkits that offer a selection of participation methods and tools aligned with the operation and evaluation phases. While the overall structure is consistent across the four implementation sites, local teams have the flexibility to tailor strategies, methods and stakeholder engagement formats (online and onsite) according to their institutional and socio-political context. This menu of tools allows project partners to choose contextually appropriate techniques while maintaining consistency with the overall framework. Priority is given to tools that are playful in structure, making the process interactive and enjoyable, and enhancing informal learning.
Figure 1
The Participatory Skills for Urban Governance Methodology (PS-U-GO).
The design and initiation phase focuses on establishing the foundation for each ULL, a blueprint. It involves identifying stakeholders, aligning values, and collaboratively defining the scope and thematic direction of the lab. This phase incorporates a range of tools such as collaborative strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis, mind mapping, and multi-voting, all aimed at fostering early youth involvement and building ownership of the process.
The operational phase is structured around a four-step participatory learning cycle that blends structured learning with non-formal learning and hands-on engagement (Figure 2). It is designed to offer a standardised overall framework and procedure for the implementation of the four ULLs across the four cities, allowing for customisation within each unique urban context.
Figure 2
The four-step participatory learning cycle of the operational phase.
Theme choice begins with the collaborative identification of local needs, challenges and opportunities, placing a particular emphasis on surfacing youth perspectives and priorities. Participatory tools such as SWOT analysis, mind mapping, and multi-voting are used to facilitate inclusive dialogue and collectively define themes of direct relevance to participants.
Exploration focuses on building shared knowledge and a collective understanding of these themes through lab sessions, urbanistic masterclasses and on-site explorations. Activities such as participatory mapping, brainwriting, city expeditions, LEGO®, Serious Play® and scenario-building exercises combine theoretical insight with sensory engagement and spatial immersion, encouraging creative and critical problem-framing.
Experimentation and co-creation translate insights into tangible action through iterative testing and prototyping. Participants engage in thematic workshops, collaborative prototyping sessions and blinktesting exercises, supported by creative and technical facilitation. This phase cultivates participants’ confidence, design capacity and civic agency.
Finally, the urban showcase phase makes outcomes publicly visible through exhibitions, interactive installations and community events, extending the process outward to gather feedback, strengthen partnerships and reinforce the civic dimension of youth-led urban transformation.
2.3 Youth ambassador training
The project’s initial comparative analysis identified the need for continuity and peer-led capacity-building as essential for lasting impact. An ambassador training programme was thus designed as a support mechanism for current ULL facilitation, but also as a means of fostering long-term sustainability. By selecting participants through open calls at local HEIs across all sites and empowering them to eventually train future ambassadors, the project aims to formalise peer-to-peer knowledge transfer and embed youth-led governance practices within each ULL, and aspires to empower youth to undertake future initiatives.
The training is strategically embedded at three critical stages of the ULLs timeline: (1) prior to the design and initiation phase; (2) during the exploration phase; and (3) after the operational phase. Each training session blends theoretical learning with hands-on, experiential activities to foster a critical acquisition and rethinking of theories, models, tools, and practices regarding participatory and collaborative approaches for the regeneration of public space, collaborative governance and civic engagement. Delivered in hybrid formats, training aims to establish a shared vocabulary and a common foundation of values across all project sites, while also facilitating local adaptation.
The ambassador training is integrated into the evaluation framework of the project, capturing key participant data at the outset, including cultural background, prior knowledge, needs and expectations. After-training questionnaires, reflective exercises and facilitated dialogues help tailor the training content and inform broader project monitoring. The training functions at the intersection of engagement, capacity-building and evaluation, anchoring the PS-U-GO methodology within institutional settings while supporting its adaptability across diverse territorial and cultural contexts. It reinforces institutional memory and positions the ambassador model as a scalable strategy for ensuring continuity and enhancing youth agency beyond the project’s duration.
2.4 Data and evaluation
A collaborative working platform (Miro) was actively used for the four ULLs, providing valuable insights as they evolve and offering a comparable base across all. The platform was set up during the design and initiation phase, continuously updated by partners and ambassadors, and adjusted to reflect key milestones and activities, new findings, stakeholders, and emerging priorities. This dynamic character and adaptability support the flexibility and relevance of the methodology, helping each ULL individually while also fostering knowledge exchange and shared learning across the four sites.
Evaluation and feedback were integrated throughout the process, and included formative and summative components designed to assess participant satisfaction, knowledge acquisition, and shifts in attitudes and perceptions. These take place before, during and after the ULL activities; each implementation team selects the most appropriate tools for each phase and for their local context, while ensuring alignment with a shared evaluation framework structured around phases, tools and key insights.
To monitor progress, three shared key milestones were identified to allow for reflection on the ULLs’ processes, the collection of evidence and outcomes, reflection on the evaluation results, and the exchange of experiences and new knowledge, supporting transparency, comparative analysis and collaborative learning. This paper presents insights from the first monitoring point (April 2025), including participant feedback, process evaluation and emergent themes across the pilot ULLs. The data collected at this point relate to two activities: (1) the evaluation of the youth ambassador training sessions, which captured reflections on participants’ backgrounds, expectations, knowledge and engagement experiences; and (2) the evaluation of the initial phases of implementation of the ULLs themselves, specifically focusing on the design and initiation phase and the first two operational steps: theme choice and exploration.2 Data include collecting insights, opinions and general feedback from ULLs’ participants, participant observation of activities, semi-structured and open interviews, and structured evaluation tools based on non-formal education practices and principles. Focus group discussions were conducted to assess knowledge and skills development as well as participants’ self-perception, and to gather feedback on the ongoing processes. Photographic and digital documentation of non-formal reflection tools as well as transcripts of the group discussions and fieldwork research notes were used to capture and organise the collected data effectively.
3. Results and analysis
The findings provide a rich, grounded understanding of how the PS-U-GO methodology was locally adapted, how engagement processes were initiated, how early themes of relevance were collaboratively identified and explored, and the impact on participants.
3.1 Evaluation of youth ambassador trainings
Strategically embedded at three key points in the ULLs’ timeline, the trainings aim to foster experience exchange, empowering participants as facilitators and peer-trainers, and offering spaces for critical (self-)reflection. Two of the three planned sessions have been conducted and evaluated to date: (1) prior to the design and initiation phase (TE1); and (2) during the exploration phase (TE2). A third training, aligned with the experimentation phase, is forthcoming.
A total of 38 participants engaged in evaluation and feedback through post-training questionnaires and additional qualitative feedback via a digital Mentimeter session. These tools were oriented to evaluate the efficiency of the training events and to gain an understanding of motivation, knowledge and skills acquisition, while being designed to capture both structured reflections and open-ended perspectives on the broader learning experience.
The ambassador cohort encompassed a wide range of backgrounds and motivations, including a desire to influence local change, enhance civic knowledge and engage in participatory urban governance. This diversity fostered mutual learning and enriched the training process. Participants reported notable gains in conceptual and practical knowledge—particularly regarding co-creation, participatory approaches, urban commons and facilitation—with several expressing readiness to mentor others. As reflected in their words, ‘I learnt to listen,’ ‘Activism in practice’ and:
I learned how different forms of needs can be connected for a common purpose.
A significant outcome was the value attributed to learning situated in real-life urban contexts. Participants viewed the combination of local actors and formal institutions as impactful:
A combination of local characters who take action in situ with representatives of ‘formal’ institutions is a great way to put forward the needs of the local community and have a bigger impact.
These experiences were seen as complementary to academic learning, with students noting how they informed their educational development:
Experiencing Naples, learning about Naples ULL context, broadening my perspective and understanding and reflecting on our ULL.
Several participants noted positively efforts to integrate ULL participation into design studio curricula.
Participants also emphasised the importance of shared ethical foundations and intercultural collaboration. As one noted:
A ULL involves people with common values and a shared target or mission. It’s very important to establish trust and understand each other.
Strong commitments to civic responsibility and social justice were consistently expressed, with participants highlighting the importance of collective action: ‘Protagonism and activism in practice’ and:
It is worth fighting for citizens’ rights and that you can do this together with different parts of the community.
Together, these findings underscore the ambassador programme’s role in fostering critical awareness, ethical engagement and sustained civic participation among youth.
3.2 Implementation of the ULLs
The data analysed were collected through qualitative insights gathered from all stakeholders involved in the ULLs.
3.2.1 Design and initiation phase
The design and initiation phase marked a pivotal step in the PS-U-GO implementation process, where ULLs collaboratively developed a localised blueprint that serves as a strategic and conceptual foundation, capturing key contextual elements, stakeholder landscapes, thematic scopes and roadmaps. This phase followed TE1, with the active participation of youth ambassadors and representatives from key stakeholder groups such as municipalities, local residents, youth organisations and educators. Their involvement ensured that the blueprint was not only methodologically grounded but also reflective of diverse perspectives and locally embedded knowledge.
To support inclusive and participatory agenda-setting, methods and tools used included: (1) SWOT analysis to surface site-specific strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, particularly in relation to youth participation and urban challenges; (2) mind mapping to enable collaborative visualisation of priorities, actors and spatial or thematic connections; (3) multi-voting to facilitate democratic decision-making and the prioritisation of themes based on collective input; and (4) a combination of on-site activities with digital tools (such as Miro and Mentimeter) to encourage active participation of young people and long-term accessibility.
Each ULL adopted distinct, context-sensitive strategies for stakeholder engagement and spatial setting and operating mode (Figure 3). This phase was characterised by an open and collaborative spirit, shaped in part by the participation of ambassadors and key local stakeholders. Spatial diagrams and stakeholder value maps (Figure 4) supported transparent engagement and diversified participation modes.
Figure 3
The four-step participatory learning cycle of the operational phase.
Figure 4
Screenshot from the Miro Board showing stakeholder participation and real-life setting.
Despite variations in type and setting, all four ULLs demonstrated how the methodology could be rooted and adapted in real-life environments, enabling diverse forms of spatial settings and civic participation (Table 2).
Table 2
Comparative stakeholder engagement and spatial settings.
| URBAN LIVING LAB (ULL) | TYPE | ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY | KEY STAKEHOLDERS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Naples (LP2) | Nomadic model engaging multiple sites | Open calls, participatory, non-formal methods used | Lido Pola—Bene Comune, Peppino Impastato Youth Centre, Department of Architecture, and National Research Council—Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development (CNR-IRISS) |
| Palermo (MaLL) | Situated, fixed location with diverse regional cultural and civic partners | Open calls; residency-based workshops promoting networking and collaboration; non-formal education tools | Fine Arts Academy (University of Palermo), artists, makers, chefs, youth and cultural associations, local non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and local residents |
| Cottbus (CoCo) | Situated, fixed central location | Semester-based rotation; stakeholder engagement co-defined by students at semester start; flexible and adaptive. | University departments and governance, city management agency, cultural workers, local associations, and NGOs |
| Nicosia (ULLοι Aglantzia) | Situated, fixed neighbourhood location | Cross-sectoral and intergenerational partnerships between university, local high schools and open call for youth inhabitants | Department of Architecture (UCY), Cyprus Youth Board, Cyprus Youth Council, local high schools, NGOs Municipality of Nicosia, and local residents |
Each ULL co-developed a roadmap that outlines the sequence of activities, participatory tools to be used, stakeholder responsibilities and expected outputs, visualised using the Miro platform and serving as reference points to guide local implementation while ensuring alignment with the PS-U-GO methodology. In Naples (LP2), the ULL aimed to generate public interventions and events that enhance intergenerational dialogue and civic awareness around the reclaiming of the sea as a public common. In Palermo (MaLL), residencies and collaborative workshops were designed to produce educational tools, creative outputs, and activities that foster ecological resilience and strengthen local identity in the Madonie region. In Cottbus (CoCo), student-led projects were designed to develop inclusive spatial design proposals and promote greater institutional openness to co-creation within higher education. In Nicosia (ULLοι Aglantzia), co-design processes for neighbourhood public spaces were intended to produce youth participation models and strengthen collaboration between the university, schools and local governance.
3.2.2 Operational phase
The operational phase of the ULLs activated the participatory learning cycle outlined in the methodology, beginning with the steps of theme choice and exploration. These stages marked a shift from groundwork to action, deepening the participatory process and activating the learning cycles embedded in the PS-U-GO methodology. Each ULL applied a combination of context-specific tools, and in some cases developed tailor-made methods to better align with the site’s scale, stakeholder composition and socio-institutional dynamics. The resulting activities varied in format and intensity—from concise, event-based sequences to extended, semester-long engagements—and incorporated both formal and non-formal learning strategies. Youth and stakeholder involvement also differed across sites, with some labs emphasising exploratory breadth and others prioritising depth through smaller, more focused cohorts.
The theme choice phase across the four ULLs provided a participatory foundation for all subsequent activities (Table 3).
Table 3
Theme choice.
| URBAN LIVING LAB (ULL) | TIMELINE OF ACTIVITIES | PARTICIPATORY TOOLS USED | THEMES IDENTIFIED |
|---|---|---|---|
| Naples (LP2) | Three months | Structured six-step methodology (brainstorming, value clustering, objective mapping, stakeholder analysis), tree of objectives, fishbone diagram, and Miro platform for visualisation and archiving | Spatial justice, democratisation of public resources and governance of urban commons |
| Palermo (MaLL) | Three days of intensive workshops | Site visits, introductory lectures, brainstorming, role-playing group ideation exercises and peer critique using storyboards | Cultural heritage, ecological transitions and rural community sustainability in the Madonie region |
| Cottbus (CoCo) | Themes emerged organically through a semester | Micro-events (film nights, repair cafés, drawing workshops, participatory games) and permanent ‘Wunschbox’ feedback tool | Mobility, accessibility, urban co-creation and intergenerational interaction |
| Nicosia (ULLοι Aglantzia) | Two structured workshops aligned with higher education institution and high-schools curricula | Workshops, neighborhood walks, post-it brainstorming, idea-clustering, creative video presentations, public voting, interpretive mapping and Miro platform for documentation | Culture, music and events; greenery and environment; public space and street art; infrastructure and mobility; social cohesion and local economy |
While some ULLs employed structured methods and others favoured creative, experiential approaches, all succeeded in surfacing themes that resonate with local youth concerns and broader urban sustainability goals. The co-definition of themes enabled youth and community stakeholders to collaboratively identify priorities grounded in lived experience while initiating processes of shared authorship and co-responsibility.
The exploration phase across the ULLs provided the context and conditions for translating thematic priorities into actionable knowledge. Again, while methodologically aligned through the PS-U-GO framework, each ULL adapted the phase to reflect its own local dynamics, institutional set-up and spatial focus (Table 4).
Table 4
Exploration.
| URBAN LIVING LAB (ULL) | PARTICIPATORY TOOLS USED | KEY OUTCOMES | PARTICIPANTS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Naples (LP2) | EpiCollect 5, mobile workshop, collaborative mapping, masterclass, creative experts, workshop for co-design | Consolidation of relationships within the Participatory Skills for Sustainable Urban Governance Erasmus+ (PS-U-GO) project’s core working group, increased awareness of issues related to access to the sea in Naples, enhanced skills and knowledge regarding participatory tools and methods | PS-U-GO ULL Naples core working group, academia, civil society, government and public sector, industry and business |
| Palermo (MaLL) | Field visits, desk research, early prototyping, interdisciplinary workshops in equipped MaLL labs and guided facilitation by the Palermo Urban Solutions Hub (PUSH) | Refined thematic ideas, material and spatial prototypes, and enhanced interdisciplinary collaboration on rural sustainability | University students, teachers, local inhabitants, designers, researchers, Madonie Natural Park representatives and PUSH facilitators |
| Cottbus (CoCo) | Student-led public events (repair café, film screenings, art/drawing sessions, planning workshops), and ‘Wunschbox’ feedback tool | Over 70 community suggestions, increased student capacity in event facilitation and civic engagement, iterative thematic development, enhanced understanding of urban commons, mobility, and participatory planning | University students, local residents, older adults and thematic experts |
| Nicosia (ULLοι Aglantzia) | Collaborative workshops, mini-lectures, urban masterclasses, on-site analysis, model-making with materials and LEGO®, visual storytelling, and social media-style video pitches | Conceptual designs, physical models, public consultations, video pitches articulating spatial and social proposals, and collaborative scenario development | University and high-school students, ambassadors, residents, municipal officials, local experts (non-governmental organisations, artists, landscape architects) |
Building on these methodological differences, collaboration within the four ULLs also took distinct forms shaped by local institutional contexts, educational structures and community networks. In Cottbus and Nicosia, students manage and run the labs, coordinating activities and facilitating engagement with the support of academics who act as mentors and support evaluation. In Cottbus, student teams organised the public events such as repair cafés, film screenings and participatory drawing sessions, collecting more than 70 community proposals. In Nicosia, architecture and high-school students collaborated in co-design workshops, model-making sessions and ‘urban masterclasses’, producing conceptual designs, physical prototypes and video pitches that visualise inclusive spatial futures. In Naples and Palermo, youth groups and community associations hold a more autonomous position, with universities contributing methodological and analytical support rather than operational leadership. In Palermo, interdisciplinary workshops and residencies within the MaLL involve students, designers, teachers and inhabitants of the Madonie region, supported by facilitators from the Palermo Urban Solutions Hub (PUSH), generating material and spatial prototypes for rural sustainability. In Naples, LP2 mobilises youth and community associations through participatory events and collective spatial actions focused on reclaiming access to the sea. Across all sites, the relations between students, youth groups, academics and civic actors vary in intensity and formality, but share a commitment to mutual learning, experimentation and intergenerational collaboration as drivers of civic capacity and urban transformation. These varying relationships reveal how the locus of agency shifts from academia to community depending on local embeddedness and prior civic infrastructures.
At the same time, the need to move beyond a homogeneous conception of youth to a constellation of actors with different capacities, expectations and constraints is highlighted. The ULLs included high-school pupils, university students, young professionals and members of community associations, each entering the process with varying degrees of autonomy and civic literacy. This diversity affected both participation and learning trajectories: younger participants often gravitated toward hands-on and creative activities (e.g. LEGO, Serious Play, model-making or city expeditions), while university students more easily assumed coordination, facilitation and evaluative roles. Socio-economic and cultural differences also shaped accessibility and confidence—echoing Bruselius-Jensen et al. (2022) and Matthews (2001) on inequalities in youth representation.
3.3 Evaluation and feedback
The analysis of data across the ULLs provided rich insights into participants’ experiences and reflections. Findings are grouped under three overarching themes aligned with the shared validation framework (Viderman et al. 2024): (1) knowledge acquisition; (2) skills development; and (3) perceptions of youth’s role in urban design.
3.3.1 Knowledge acquisition
Evaluation data revealed significant learning outcomes grounded in situated engagement and experiential methods. In Palermo, participants deepened their understanding of the socio-cultural context of the Madonie region—its traditions, informal economies and local dynamics—while interrogating ideas of inclusion and collaboration. Reflections such as ‘the word “inclusion” is not inclusive’ and the use of ‘tuttità’ (collective inclusivity) illustrated a growing critical vocabulary and sensitivity to social complexity. Participants valued the ‘uses and customs, genius loci, and know-how’ of the area and described learning ‘how design interfaces with both technology and tradition’.
In Nicosia, participants reported a stronger grasp of urban mobility, social needs and design’s role in social cohesion. Through lectures, fieldwork and collaborative analysis, they engaged with concepts such as urban commons and micro-mobility, recognising that ‘we young people have the power to create many things’. Others stressed listening and observation: ‘residents have nice ideas if you listen to them.’
In Naples, learning was shaped by the city’s complexity and theoretical framings. Participants reflected on the contextual specificity of concepts such as ‘urban commons’, noting they ‘can be understood differently in each country’. One commented, ‘I don’t know what a ULL is anymore,’ acknowledging the destabilising yet productive character of learning in contested socio-political settings. Across all ULLs, participants moved from surface understanding to critical reflection, connecting spatial, cultural and social dimensions of design practice. These findings resonate with Schön’s (1983) notion of reflective practice and with recent arguments that experiential learning in ULLs must go beyond technical knowledge to nurture interpretive and ethical awareness (Sachs Olsen & van Hulst 2023).
3.3.2 Skills development
Participants across all sites developed a blend of technical, organisational and interpersonal competencies. In Palermo, students and stakeholders strengthened public speaking, teamwork, active listening and participatory design capacities. Many described newfound confidence in expressing ideas and managing group dynamics—learning ‘to be less of a coordinator and more of a motivator’.
In Nicosia, creative tools such as sketching, LEGO prototyping and video pitching improved communication, visual storytelling and collaboration. Working with peers from other schools and with residents enhanced empathy and environmental awareness. Participants noted learning ‘to think creatively and collaborate with people I don’t know’ and ‘to present my idea quickly and clearly’.
In Naples, participants re-evaluated their skills through exposure to the walkscapes methodology (Careri 2017). Activities encouraged reflective use of ethnographic and sensory mapping, combining notes, sketches, photographs and videos to document the post-industrial landscape. This process pushed participants to integrate observation, theory and creative interpretation—linking local practice to broader, more-than-human understandings of urban space.
Across sites, participants’ reflections show that skill development operated not only as individual learning but also as collective competence-building. Collaborative experimentation fostered communication across age, discipline and expertise—supporting what Franz et al. (2015) term ‘co-creation literacy’. These transversal skills, combining creative confidence and civic empathy, are crucial to sustaining participatory innovation beyond the lab setting.
3.3.3 Perceptions of youth’s role in urban design
Across the ULLs, youth described themselves as catalysts for local transformation—bridging innovation and continuity. In Palermo, they viewed their role as enablers of inclusive processes and mutual exchange:
each of us gives something to the other […] it’s about doing things together.
Others reflected on the need to stay ‘within conflict—limitations, problems, and social and cultural complexities’.
In Nicosia, participants emphasised the importance of youth perspectives in planning, highlighting creativity and new ways of imagining space: ‘young people see the city from a different perspective’. They linked youth engagement with sustainability and social cohesion, insisting that ‘young people can help create cities friendlier to residents’.
In Naples, participants focused on the ethical dimension of collaboration, stressing shared values over shared goals:
it is not necessary to have the same goal, but to have the same values to work together.
Activities were experienced as empowering and responsibility-building, broadening perspectives and ‘making [them] feel stronger the responsibility of [their] actions.’ Participants articulated a shift from participation as attendance toward participation as protagonism—anchored in situated learning, reflection and care.
Comparatively, the ULLs reveal how youth agency is mediated by context. In Palermo and Naples, long-standing community ties fostered a sense of collective ownership and political awareness; in Nicosia, structured pedagogical frameworks promoted confidence and civic literacy among younger participants. Across settings, participants recognised the need for intergenerational collaboration and the value of trust as a precondition for engagement. These findings echo Bruselius-Jensen et al. (2022) and Matthews (2001), who argue that meaningful youth participation must acknowledge diverse trajectories of agency, not presume a homogeneous ‘youth voice’. Taken together, these evaluations show that youth engagement in ULLs is both a pedagogical and a political process. It extends beyond acquiring knowledge or skills to cultivating critical consciousness and shared responsibility for place. The findings confirm that when youth are positioned as co-creators rather than as beneficiaries, ULLs can operate as transformative learning environments—sites where civic imagination and design experimentation converge to reshape how cities, and citizenship itself, are learned and practiced.
4. Discussion and conclusions
The initial implementation of the Participatory Skills for Urban Governance (PS-U-GO) methodology offers grounded insights into how urban living labs (ULLs) can be methodologically structured to support youth-centred participatory processes while remaining adaptable to diverse territorial, institutional and socio-cultural contexts. It indicates that it is possible to construct ULL frameworks that are both replicable and responsive, provided they are grounded in coherent phases, supported by adaptable tools and embedded in structures capable of sustaining participation. The methodology proved adaptable across a spectrum of scales: from the dense urban fabric of Nicosia, to the rural setting of Palermo’s Madonie, to the multiple-scale interventions in Naples. Smaller scale contexts and more focused participant groups benefited from hands-on, creative and iterative tools, while larger or territorially diffuse settings required more consolidated formats such as thematic clustering, structured prototyping and regional stakeholder engagement. Despite this variation, all ULLs operationalised the core dimensions of the methodology through context-appropriate strategies, confirming what Franz et al. (2015) and Voytenko et al. (2016) have underlined: the necessity of contextual sensitivity and co-creation as the foundation of any meaningful ULL process.
The comparative implementation process also reaffirmed the significance of embedding ULLs within both civic networks and higher education structures. Naples and Palermo capitalised on prior collaborations with local actors, fostering legitimacy and continuity through deep territorial embeddedness. The ULLs in Cottbus and Nicosia demonstrated how academic anchoring and curricular integration can ensure regular engagement, institutional visibility and alignment with pedagogical aims. These divergent but complementary strategies illustrate that embedding must extend beyond spatial or organisational alignment to include intergenerational trust and everyday relationality—dimensions often overlooked in the literature. They expand von Wirth et al.’s (2019) mechanisms of ‘learning, linking, and embedding’, suggesting that embeddedness operates through not only organisational partnerships but also affective and temporal commitments that sustain youth agency.
Learning processes within these labs further nuance established understandings of experimentation and reflexivity in ULLs (McCormick & Hartmann 2017; Sachs Olsen & van Hulst 2023). Student-led ULLs enabled higher levels of reflection and skill acquisition than settings where youth are positioned merely as participants. This supports Petrescu et al.’s (2022) argument that HEIs can act as civic infrastructures, while extending Schön’s (1983) notion of the reflective practitioner into a collective practice of reflection distributed across peers, communities and mentors. In this sense, learning in ULLs becomes dialogical and situated—emerging through iterative cycles of action and reflection embedded in local realities (Marvin et al. 2018). The youth ambassador trainings embedded in the PS-U-GO framework exemplify this dialogical mode of learning. Functioning as both pedagogical and infrastructural devices, they supported continuity, capacity-building, and knowledge transfer across generations and sites. Evaluation data confirmed that participants developed conceptual and methodological literacy around co-creation, participatory governance and urban commons, alongside transversal skills such as collaboration, facilitation and critical spatial awareness. This aligns with transition governance perspectives that view experimentation as both learning and governance (Hölscher et al. 2019), while extending these models by centring youth as the principal agents of that reflexivity.
The findings affirm that youth agency in urban transformation is not simply a matter of inclusion but of the capacity to act critically and creatively within real settings—to co-author processes of urban and institutional learning. In this sense, the project bridges the divide between ULLs as governance experiments and ULLs as pedagogical infrastructures, demonstrating how structured flexibility and iterative evaluation can create the conditions for durable, transformative youth engagement.
Recognising the heterogeneity of youth across these sites proved crucial to sustaining participation. Participants represented diverse age groups, educational levels and socio-economic backgrounds; these differences shaped the forms and intensities of engagement. In Naples and Palermo, working-class and rural youth contributed experiential and place-based knowledge that complemented academic expertise; in Cottbus and Nicosia, students leveraged disciplinary literacies to mediate between civic and institutional actors. This interplay demonstrates that ‘youth’ should not be understood as a fixed category but as a spectrum of roles, expectations and capacities shaped by context—a point long underscored in youth participation scholarship (Matthews 2001; Bruselius-Jensen et al. 2022).
By acknowledging this diversity, the PS-U-GO approach reframes ULLs not as neutral engagement platforms but as pedagogical ecologies, where differentiated roles, responsibilities and supports are essential for genuine inclusion. It responds to Baxter’s (2022) call for decolonising and reflexive design pedagogies that enable participants to question, rather than merely enact, existing institutional scripts. In doing so, it extends current understandings of ULLs as experimental infrastructures, showing how educational and governance dimensions intersect when ‘youth’ are recognised as heterogeneous and dynamic co-producers of urban change.
For those developing future youth-centred ULLs, several implications emerge. Facilitation strategies must respond to diversity in background, motivation and readiness. Real responsibility—through coordination, mediation or evaluation—builds ownership and continuity, whereas symbolic participation reinforces passivity. Dual embedding within educational and municipal ecosystems strengthens sustainability and relevance, while reflective evaluation must capture not only spatial or technical outcomes but also how participants build agency, collaborative capacity and intergenerational trust. Together, these insights offer a pathway for translating participatory experimentation into enduring structures of youth engagement and inclusive urban governance.
Notes
[1] For the PS-U-GO project, ‘youth’ refers to individuals between the ages of 15 and 24, as defined by the World Youth Report (https://social.desa.un.org/sites/default/files/publications/2023-08/2020-World-Youth-Report.pdf).
Acknowledgements
The authors thank all the participants of the Participatory Skills for Urban Governance (PS-U-GO) project and of the urban living labs: ULLoi Aglantzia, Nicosia; Madonie ULL, Petralia Sottana Palermo (led by Emilia Pardi); Lido Pola ULL, Naples (led by Stefania Ragozino); and CommoningCottbus (CoCo) ULL, Cottbus (led by Tihomir Viderman and Hendrik Weiner).
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no known financial or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Data accessibility
This study involves qualitative data collected from participants in educational and community contexts. Therefore, the full datasets (including transcripts and evaluation materials) are not publicly available to protect participants’ privacy. Summarised or anonymised excerpts of the evaluation data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Ethical approval
Informed consent to participate in the study was obtained from the participants and is available from the authors.