Mutual Learning Communities Roadmap: Learning(s) from the ULALABS Experience.

After years of EU urban sustainability projects focused on replication and scaling up, it seems the EU has finally recognized a hard truth: urban sustainability projects don’t scale seamlessly, and replication is often not feasible. Secondly, knowledge exchange and information sharing are not leading to the acceleration or uptake of solutions.

The reason is quite simple. Many urban sustainability solutions and experiences are not replicable. They need to be adapted to local institutional, political, economic, and cultural contexts.

This is precisely why we started the ULALABS project—to develop methods and tools that support learning from each other and adapting these learnings to one’s own context.

We have therefore developed what we call Inclusive Transformative Distributed Mutual Learning Communities as an approach to learn from urban sustainability experiences across Europe and help practitioners translate these into their own settings.

The Mutual Learning Communities Roadmap report is a methodological reflection on how we moved from the founding principles of transformative learning and inclusivity to the point where we are now ready to build the first pilot learning communities. Alongside this reflection, the Learning Communities Roadmap translates these principles into actionable strategies—offering ideas on how to identify, articulate and activate learning communities in different contexts without losing their transformative intent.

Let’s be clear: there is no magic wand, no sudden revelations, no miraculous moments. Instead, this report highlights the reflexive, dialogical, and sometimes complicated journey from an idea to a “prototype” of Inclusive Transformative Distributed Mutual Learning Communities—now ready to be piloted.

We hope the report can serve as inspiration to others. Not because it offers a ready-made solution, but because it can be used as a generative tool to reflect on your own experience and practice.

What might I do differently in future projects? What can I take into my own practice? And what kinds of modifications would be needed to make it work in my own context?

This report is not a catalogue of solutions—it’s an invitation to reflect and learn.

Download the full report here.

We will also host a live online event to launch the report, where contributors will share reflections on their own learning journeys—from idea to prototype.

The launch event will take place on November 13, from 14:00 to 15:00 CET.

You can register for the event here: https://forms.office.com/e/ZUwKE9MxxR

The session will be recorded and later published as a podcast on our website.

The Roadmap is the final result of Work Package 3 (Result 2) and a major milestone within the ULALABS project. The ULALABS project is co-financed by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Spanish Service for the Internationalisation of Education (SEPIE). Neither the European Union nor the Granting Authority can be held responsible for them.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants of our activities for their active involvement and valuable contributions that are included in this publication. Without the active engagement of the stakeholder partners in our regional ecosystems this work would not be possible.

 We would further like to acknowledge the support from our ECIU colleagues, and from all project partners that supported the work in this publication with their energy, insights and feedback throughout the process. The responsibility for this report, including any errors or omissions, rests solely with the authors.