Context
As part of the city's mobility and public space strategies, 'Levande Stockholm' (Living Stockholm) is a municipal initiative encompassing some 20 urban design interventions annually where streets are temporarily transformed into pedestrian pathways and recreation areas to promote citizen engagement and interaction. The experiment will engage with the next iteration of the Levande Stockholm program.
Doing What?
The experiment temporarily re-appropriates Norrtullsgatan (a street connecting the CBD with the residential district around Odenplan and its new commuter train station) into a pedestrian street with outdoor cafés and urban furniture; evaluations will guide the decision on whether to change the street permanently as part of a pedestrian route connecting the city centre with an ex-urban recreational area (Haga).
Learning what?
The experiment seeks to learn about how to reconcile different ambitions of urban design interventions related to mobility (redistributing space between modes), place-making and how the municipality can adopt more flexible and participatory approaches to planning and design.
Who is involved?
KTH Royal Institute of Technology (lead), City of Stockholm (Levande Stockholm), Uppsala University, Lund University, SWECO. The city organizes the experiment, and Sweco designs the street space during the experiment. Academic partners monitor & evaluate, & lead the co-creation process.
How are the experiments 'better-embedded'? (general)
The general approach here is that the experiment is better embedded in a (broader than currently customary) learning network or 'learning community' with citizens, urban planners & policymakers and other relevant stakeholders, divided into two groups: Lab participants and a Lab reflection group. They jointly formulate learning questions and monitor the lessons learnt.
How are the experiments 'better-embedded'? (city-specific)
The learning network will include senior planners and landscape architects of the municipality, user group representatives and consultancy partners. The findings from the ULL will inform municipal (City of Stockholm) policies on the reconfiguration of public spaces to accommodate non-traffic uses as well as collaborative modes of urban planning that include substantive involvement of all stakeholders.
How is the impact of the experiment evaluated, both in terms of learning processes and policy mix?
We evaluate the learning processes and the impact of the experiment on the urban (mobility) policy mix through (1) Before-and-after stakeholder workshops (with participants and a reflection group) and will inquire into (first) expected and (later) experienced challenges and learning outcomes of the experiment. (2) Individual semi-structured interviews with a representative share of participants and reflection group members, and also policymakers who were neither participants nor reflection group members. (3) Ethnographic work (already ongoing) will study qualitative change in the learning network engaged in the experiment.
How does the experiment support transformative capacity?
Our approach extends learning processes beyond the small group of enthusiastic lab practitioners with a reciprocal effect: it draws on questions and knowledge from the (potentially conflicting) established policy and planning logics, yet, at the same time, includes a broader range of stakeholders it diffuses the lab lessons better into the mainstream policy development community. We test how this learning network enhances the transformative capacity of the city