Method Development

How can Living Labs contribute to sustainable urban transformation?

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Global Urban Sustainability , Living Labs , Method Development

A short clip where some of the speakers at the conference Getting our Cities Right #2 in Alnarp reflect on Living Laboratories as a methodology to create more sustainable urban landscapes.

Getting our Cities Right #2 – From Living Laboratories to urban healthscapes

Living Labs , Method Development , Urban Landscapes and Forests

In October 2022 the second conference of SLU Urban Futures’ series Getting Our Cities Right took place at SLU Campus Alnarp. The focus was on Living Laboratories as new formats for research, teaching, and societal interaction. Read the…


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Living labs – Gröna Fakta 6/2022

Living Labs , Method Development , Urban Landscapes and Forests

(Article in Swedish) 'Living labs, levande laboratorier, kan vara ett förhållningssätt och en arena för samproduktion av kunskap och utforskning i realtid och i direkt koppling med omgivningen. Med exempel från olika platser lyfts i detta Gröna Fakta…


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The time is ripe for a Living Lab Campus

Living Labs , Method Development , Urban Landscapes and Forests

Campus Alnarp has a long tradition of using the outdoors for testbeds, trial areas and landscape laboratories. In the autumn of 2022 a new doctoral project in Alnarp will explore the possibilities of using the landscapes of the…


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Living Lab SLU Landscape – collaboration-capacity building

Living Labs , Method Development , Urban Landscapes and Forests

This initiative, running since 2015, focuses on inter-disciplinary engagements within a university context, with the aim of developing tools for synthetically bridging geographically isolated, and historically separate academic research domains.


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The Campus as a Living Lab – How Utrecht University is co-producing targeted sustainability solutions

Living Labs , Method Development

Society faces a multitude of complex sustainability challenges, which require new ways of thinking and doing. Universities, with their assets and knowledge, play an influential role in facilitating such change by collaborating across disciplines and sectors.


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Alnarp’s Living Lab Landscape

Living Labs , Method Development , Urban Landscapes and Forests

Alnarp can be seen as an agricultural and forest island in the highly urbanized region of Malmö, in the south of Sweden. The dynamic campus landscape constitutes a valuable resource for transdisciplinary research, teaching and collaboration.


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Urban nature connects Europe and Latin America

Global Urban Sustainability , Method Development , Urban Ecosystem Services

By connecting researchers, policymakers, local communities and developers, the Conexus project is co-creating and evidencing solutions that are inspired and supported by nature. SLU is coordinating and running living labs across seven countries in Europe and Latin America.


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Campus Lab Landscapes: Creating dialogue between Alnarp, Uppsala, and Umeå

Living Labs , Method Development , Urban Landscapes and Forests

During the SLU Landscape Days 2021, SLU Urban Futures hosted an interactive workshop to open a dialogue on conceptualizing and creating living labs on university campuses. Read more about the event and the definitions of living labs.


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Urban Forum – Practice meets Academia

Method Development , Urban Design , Urban Landscapes and Forests

Urban Forum is a collaboration between SLU Urban Futures and Urban Arena at Lund University. An Urban forum is a place where practice meets academia, for practitioners and practice-oriented researchers to exhibit their work, finished or in progress,…


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SLU Multisensory Outdoor Laboratory – Sensola

Living Labs , Method Development , Urban Ecosystem Services

How do we best understand the role of various outdoor environments in everyday life? Humans interact with urban and natural environments in ways that are dynamic, complex and multisensory. New portable technology makes it possible to study these…


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Nudging or participation for the sustainable every day — whose knowledge counts?

Governance , Method Development , Social Inclusiveness and Health

While technological fixes dominate the sustainability agenda, the radical change that is needed also requires a fundamental remake of our society, including everyday practices.


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Lab Stories – Alnarp Landscape laboratory

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Living Labs , Method Development , Urban Landscapes and Forests

(Video in Swedish) SLU Urban Futures met Björn Wiström and Erik Svensson in charge of the maintenance and development of the Alnarp Landscape Laboratory, covering about 20 hectares of land for experimental design, construction and management.

Urban Wildlife and Citizen Science

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Method Development , Urban Wildlife

In this Urban Take-Away we meet Tim Hofmeester, Researcher at the Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies and SLU Urban Futures Hub Coordinator in Umeå. He shares his experiences with community science projects, discovering the secret lives…

Urban Take-Away: The Strategic Synthesis Project

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Global Urban Sustainability , Governance , Method Development

In our second Urban Take-Aways, we meet Jonas Bylund, research and innovations officer for JPI Urban Europe and programme coordinator for IQS. We make a deep dive into synthesis and explore what it means and how it can contribute…

Teaching with the sky as the ceiling – positive effects when children and teaching move outdoors

Method Development , Urban Childhoods , Urban Landscapes and Forests

Schools that relocate the classroom outdoors can expect a large number of positive effects. In addition to reducing the spread of infection, research shows that teaching conducted outdoors rapidly improves the pupils’ concentration, working memory and motivation to…


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Food waste to new food in an urban context – production, risk assessment and consumer acceptance

Method Development , Urban Circularity , Urban Food and Agriculture

The project focuses on the innovative use of anaerobically digested food waste, to allow urban production of healthy food such as oyster mushrooms and new types of leafy vegetables such as Pak Choi.


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Strategic Synthesis Project

Global Urban Sustainability , Method Development , Urban Design

This inter-institutional and transdisciplinary exchange targets harvesting knowledge on synthesis processes and methods relevant to urban topics considered at the European level. Initiated in 2018, it unfolds in partnership with IQ Samhällsbyggnad and Joint Programming Initiative JPI Urban…


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Landscape Laboratory Alnarp 2.0 – towards a Landscape Lab Office

Living Labs , Method Development , Urban Landscapes and Forests

The Alnarp Landscape Lab can be identified as a new form of wooded urban open space and a living lab for urban woods, accessible to urban publics as much as to urban researchers, teachers, and students.


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Urban Take-Away: The Futures Lab

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Method Development , Urban Design , Urban Food and Agriculture

Urban Take-Aways is a film series where researchers and practitioners share insights from various projects relating to urban sustainability. In the first Urban Take-Away, we meet Josefin Wangel and learn more about the Futures Lab at SLU.

Greening Urban Lifestyles through Nudging and Participation (NAP)

Governance , Method Development , Social Inclusiveness and Health

NAP studies how city planning can advance sustainable urban lifestyles. Focus is on two governance strategies, namely nudging and participatory processes.


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Bat monitoring in urban areas

Method Development , Urban Biodiversity , Urban Wildlife

Citizens’ science projects, in which the observations of thousands of people are systematically recorded, have a great potential for strengthening human-nature interactions in urban environments and contribute to scientific analyses of urban sustainability.


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Co-creation!

Do you miss something here? Would you like to contribute? Please let us know: urbanfutures@slu.se