Advancing Sustainable Urban Transformation through Living Labs

The Öresund Region, which encompasses a population of 3.5 million across Southern Sweden and Eastern Denmark, aims to be a regional ”powerhouse” in Europe for sustainability, innovation and clean-tech. It can therefore provide a ”laboratory” by which to experiment, implement, examine and evaluate the progress of (local) transition governance and infrastructural investments. The Urban Transition Öresund project (2011-2014) is a cross-border cooperation between Swedish and Danish partners (including academic institutions, local governments, regional authorities, and clean-tech businesses) in the Öresund Region to evaluate and improve collaborative efforts to promote sustainable urban transformation. The working approach is the co-exploration of case studies – encompassing existing and planned buildings and districts in the Öresund Region – from which essential lessons are being extracted and subsequently tested on further projects in order to obtain general lessons. Importantly, the case studies from the Öresund Region are being supplemented by research on international experiences with a particular focus on new forms of collaboration, specifically the format of Living Labs, which can be simply described as a concept to integrate research and innovation processes within a public-private-people partnership. This paper presents a discussion of how the concept of Living Labs can support (local) transition governance towards sustainable urban transformation in the Öresund Region and beyond.