Living Labs in the Construction of Smart Cities: Lessons from the Book A Nordic Smart Sustainable City

By Paloma Valdivia Vizarreta

As part of the our ULALABS project—where the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Linköping University, the University of Stavanger, and the University of Twente together with local stakeholders, we collaborate to create a mutual learning community on living labs and experimentation spaces focused on urban and climate challenges—the contribution of the book A Nordic Smart Sustainable City: Lessons from Theory and Practice (Routledge, 2025) is especially relevant.

Edited by Barbara Maria Sageidet, Daniela Müller-Eie, and Kristiane M. F. Lindland, this collective volume brings together sixteen chapters exploring how smart and sustainable cities take shape across multiple dimensions: education, democracy, mobility, culture, technology, and participation. ULALABS members and researchers, Kristiane M. F. Lindland and Anders Riel Müller from University of Stavanger, and Helene Eiliott from Stavanger municipality are among the authors and co-authors of various of the chapters of the book.

In this entry, we read the book through the lens of Living Labs, as it offers concrete experiences in Stavanger that directly align with the logic of our project: how to translate global concepts into local practices, how to create co-creation spaces with diverse stakeholders, and how to turn the city into a shared learning environment.

Living Labs are portrayed as social spaces where new forms of governance, participation, and coexistence are explored. They emphasize the importance of democratizing innovation, ensuring that all voices—not just the most privileged—are included in shaping urban futures.

Through examples from Stavanger, the book shows how Living Labs and other urban experimentation spaces can help translate abstract concepts like sustainability and resilience into practical, local actions.

Particularly novel contribution is the exploration of the intersection between art, culture, and urban development, smart city concept (Chapter 15, co-authored by Kristiane M. F. Lindland). It argues that cities are not built solely with data and sensors, but also with symbols, narratives, and cultural expressions. Living Labs can offer fertile ground for these intersections, as they can become spaces for artistic and cultural creation that engage with urban sustainability. The book shows how public art projects, creative interventions, and collective expressions can open new ways of thinking about and experiencing the city. This artistic dimension enriches the Labs' role as spaces for critical reflection and collective imagination.

Finally, the book underscores – as it also emerges in ULALABS discussions and results so far - the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and cross-cutting engagement —involving educators, social scientists, artists, and citizens alongside engineers and planners. It acknowledges the challenges of managing such diversity but sees it as essential for meaningful innovation. Living Labs are framed not just as tools for urban transformation, but as pedagogical and community-driven spaces where learning, experimentation, and even failure are part of the process of building better cities.

¨Tackling urban challenges also requires cross-sectoral collaboration. This has been a central tenet of the research network as a whole from the outset. Neither academia, the public sector, the private sector, nor civil society can solve these challenges alone. There is a need to cultivate a sense of humility about one’s own sector’s ability to solve the complex challenges facing cities today and in the future. This in turn requires an awareness of the limitations of each sector and group, as well as respect for the contributions of others. Hence, knowledge and respect for the different areas of competences and responsibilities across different sectors are important. ¨ Anders Riel Müller (Chapter 2)

This book offers a valuable opportunity to gain a deeper, first-hand, and up-to-date understanding of the initiatives and transformative visions being carried out in Stavanger and many interesting insights to take into account in the ULALABS Learning Community, we invite you to explore it here.

Prof. Paloma Valdivia Vizarreta, Serra Húnter Fellow and lecturer in the Department of Educational Theory and Social Pedagogy at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). As part of the ULALABS Learning Community, and thanks to the ECIU mobility framework between UAB and the University of Stavanger (UiS), Paloma returned to UiS for her second research stay.