Source: Own illustration, Bernert, Weiser, Kampfmann and Lang, 2024
Real-world laboratory processes are multi-layered projects that bring together different actors in order to jointly implement sustainability experiments. While the experiments are directly aimed at developing certain social effects through interventions, the collaborative processes of “real-world laboratory making” have not yet been so clearly addressed as the origin of such effects.
In the article presented here, the authors explore the question of what effects these joint and often long-term processes of collaboration have. To this end, the authors examine the real-world laboratory project “Zukunftsstadt Lüneburg 2030+”, which set up and operated a real-world laboratory from 2015 to 2023.
The results show that the transdisciplinary collaboration process had a wide range of effects in urban society, the administration and the university. It was striking that these effects were neither directly intended nor planned, but rather emerged emergently from the process.
In their article, the authors identify effects in three dimensions:
- In the area of administration, the real-world lab process was able to establish a new form of collaborative governance through various formats
- At Leuphana University, the living lab project has promoted the emergence of diverse learning spaces in which transformative and transdisciplinary teaching takes place
- In urban society, the real-world laboratory has not only become a place for experimentation, but also a strong actor for sustainable development - between civil society, university, local business and city administration
With this article, the authors contribute to the understanding of the effects of transdisciplinary and transformative research processes in real-world laboratories.
The article appeared earlier this year in the special issue “Impacts of Real-world Labs in Sustainability Transformations” published by GAIA.
Bernert, Philip;Weiser, Annika; Kampfmann, Teresa;Lang, Daniel J. (2024). „Impacts beyond Experimentation ‐ Conceptualising Emergent Impacts from Long-Term Real-World Laboratory Processes“, GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 33 (S1),18 – 25. https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.33.S1.4.
The article is available open access.