The Impact of Urban Living Labs – Building Capacities and Changing Routines

The aim of the four TRUSTMAKING Urban Living Labs was to foster youth empowerment and support city governments in adopting co-research and co-design approaches for the green transition. A structured evaluation framework assessed their impact across capacity building, institutional change, long-term stability, and scalability. As the local teams in the four ULLs in Oslo, Panevėžys, Rotterdam, and Vienna implement various initiatives they spark first tangible changes. These results highlight the transformative potential of trustmaking approaches in the co-creation of public spaces and green infrastructures.
At the heart of TRUSTMAKING is the creation of Urban Living Labs (ULLs) to empower young people and build the capacity of city governments to take up co-research and co-design approaches for the new green transition. The wide range of issues addressed in and through the TRUSTMAKING ULLs required flexible and process-oriented forms of evaluation, depending on the specific values and goals that guided the experimentation. To take this into account, the Trustmaking Collective has defined a methodological framework, a monitoring process and indicators to monitor and evaluate the four TRUSTMAKING ULLs. The monitoring scheme and procedure are designed to allow for unexpected and emergent results to be taken into account and to be adapted to the different social, political and site-specific contexts of the different cities. Throughout the facilitation of the four ULL’s, we continuously evaluated the impact of the local action according to four key aspects:

• Capacities: Young people were able to gain more capacities
• Change: Change in the routines of city administrations was achieved to include aspects of youth co-creation in their processes
• Stability: The ULLs/ their activities are being continued by stakeholders
• Scalability: The ULLs/ their approaches and principles are taken up by other cities

Let’s have a look at some of the impacts, the Trustmaking ULL’s in Oslo, Panevėžys, Rotterdam and Vienna were able to achieve:

Capacities:

In Oslo, The youth gained education and skills for reflecting on the municipality’s own plans and outcomes, through analysis of the criteria for quality public spaces and then in-person assessments of local public spaces based on these criteria. Furthermore, participating youth gained confidence in their abilities by learning hands-on skills through the design and co-construction workshops.
The Panevėžys ULL allowed young people to gain capacities in 1) analysing and understanding urban context from sustainability perspective; 2) analysing and understanding their challenges and needs related to city’s green spaces; 3) understanding participatory budgeting and how to propose own ideas to the city by using this tool 4) urban gardening and co-designing and constructing inclusive public spaces.
In the Vienna ULL, the development of youth’s capacities was especially palpable in the longer-term collaborations with youth partners WUK.workspace and the school HLMW9, where the participants in the end took ownership of the projects and became not just co-creators but even hosts of contact zone activities, that involved representatives of city administration.
By offering three training sessions on general communication skills, The ULL Rotterdam strengthened self-trust and confidence of youth with skills they can apply in their everyday life or e.g. for participating in formal planning processes.

Change:

The municipal staff from Bykuben in Oslo changed some aspects of their routines by coming to the school and inviting the school classes to their space at Bykuben. For the final co-construction activity, Bykuben staff members took part at the school yard outside of their working hours on the weekend, but a more stable change in routines would require more flexibility in their working hours.
In Panevėžys, a routines of administration and planning processes was encouraged through the ULL. Firstly with an invitation by the municipality to help them gather youth ideas for a public space they are planning to develop. Furthermore, the municipality agreed to integrate ULL activities in their participatory budgeting program.
In Rotterdam, the established buddy system gave young professionals in the field of architecture and urbanism a chance to work with local youth, experiencing how local knowledge is as valuable as professional knowledge. Training young professionals can eventually lead to changing the routines of their future workplaces as well.
After continuous involvement of the Vienna city administration, they reached out to the Vienna ULL for a collaboration in their participatory process of the urban development area Rothneusiedl, aiming to take up some of the formats and methods of youth co-creation in their processes.

Stability:

In Oslo, the school that Natural State partnered aims to continue the ULL and continue some of the trustmaking activities on the school premise. They are working on finalizing the indoor makerspace, which could be a place to invite external actors to meet youth and help with their projects.
Though in Panevėžys collaboration between the municipality and project partners was stable, not all partners continued the collaboration. With a new youth partner on board – the Panevėžys District Gabrielė Petkevičaitė-Bitė library’s youth club – a stable partnership could be established.
As the Rotterdam ULL built on an existing collaboration at the Hef House in Feijenoord, it was informed by and informed the longer-term collaboration with the local youth.
The ULL in Vienna was able to continue its activities and even expand its network of youth partners with a second local youth center, and two schools, while continuing to work with the youth group of WUK work.space. Beyond the established contacts to the city administration there’s a planned collaboration with Vienna Wohnpartner.

Scalability:

To scale up the experiences from the Oslo ULL of enhancing partnerships between urban administration and schools, a mapping of municipal offices in proximity to educational institutions would be a first step, with the goal of creating context-specific connections between these offices and nearby schools. In Vienna, a planned collaboration with Vienna Wohnpartner will take up the approaches of youth co-research and co-creation to the co-design of a cultural program together with the inhabitants.

Finally, the Trustmaking Guidebook (NAI publishing, forthcoming in 2025) aims to ensure the further development of Urban Living Labs and the maintenance of co-created projects beyond the project phase. The publication adds an important but mostly overlooked and invisible aspect to the planning discourse and co-creation literature, which is the element of trust in processes of planning. By offering a broad range of co-creation methods, such as placemaking and arts-based strategies the publication aims to inspire young creators, policy makers and planners facilitating policy development towards acknowledging the agency of youth in urban transformation processes.