Cities as Living Labs

Increasing the impact of investment in the circular

economy for sustainable cities

What is a Living Lab?

Living Lab is an open innovation ecosystem based
on a systematic user co-creation approach that
integrates public and private, research and innovation
activities in communities. Living Labs place citizens
at the centre of innovation with the help of various
approaches, instruments, methods and tools.

Aim of the Cities as Living Labs Study:

To understand the impact and added value of EU-funded pro-
jects focusing on circular economy at city-level in the context of
Living Labs through publically available data sources and case
15 European Cities participated
in the study to get an over-
view of the Circular economy
studies and to: strategy and projects.
Evaluate how cities have elaborated and implemented urban
strategies in the context of three circular economy dimen-
sions:
5 cities (Helsinki, Manresa,
Lisbon, Eindhoven, Riga)
selected for an in-depth case
-- sustainable use of resources, natural and cultural capital study to identify good & bad
-- circular mobility practices, the benefits and
-- resource efficient buildings and urban spaces barriers of the EU funded
R&I projects in order to make
To describe how the cities mobilise and interact with various recommendations for devel-
system innovation dimensions including Living Labs. oping future EU R&I funding
To get a better understanding of the impact of the EU funding instruments.

7
especially from Horizon 2020 (H2020) and the 7th Framework
Programme (FP7) projects focusing on circular economy at policy recommendations
the city-level in the context of Living Labs. emerged from the study.

Key Findings:
There is a strong correlation between Urban Strategy activity intensity of European cities and their participation
in FP7/H2020 projects.
Living Labs are underutilized resources in urban strategy development. Lack of public participation and citizen
engagement could be better addressed in Large Scale EU projects.
Certain geographic regions in Europe appear to execute more intensive urban strategy than others. The most
active urban strategy cities in Europe include: Brussels, Barcelona, London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Turin, Paris,
Glasgow, Milan, Copenhagen, Bologna, Gothenburg and Madrid.
 Results from the Study:
Knowledge dissemination across Europe is some-
what challenging. New projects are mainly ground-
ed on the existing relationships and new connec-
tions between actors that dont know each other
are relatively rare.
Circular Economy is still a blurry concept for cities,
which needs clarification. Cities associate circular
economy especially with technological innova-
tions and citizens involvement whereas science
diplomacy (i.e. the city participating in global or
bilateral initiatives) is less valued.
Cities are using a great mixture of funding instru-
ments to promote circular economy however there
is a fragmentation in funding and research and
urban development programmes, where long term
commitment is required. The long term perspective
is very important in innovative Urban Circular Econ-
omy planning since often a single project is not
sufficient effort for a permanent operational activity.
In the past few years, cities have started to open
their data in order to enable new digital services.
EU-funding has an important role in developing
physical and digital infrastructure.
Governance and monitoring of success of the
urban strategy and its innovation component is
important.
The Living Lab methodology is an important public
sector innovation which enables the foundation for
bottom-up (public sector) innovations.
Commitment to science diplomacy has a strong
correlation with participation in FP7/H2020 projects.

7 Policy recommendations:
Innovation in circular economy requires a systemic Circular development monitoring and reporting has
approach. to be made in a formal network of action. Through
the study it has been discovered that:
There is a need to promote new business models
and alternative sources of funding at city level. -- there is a need for a common definition of Cir-
cular Economy
It is important to target transversal and holistic
-- stakeholders have to be supported in translat-
approaches in funding programmes.
ing specific strategies into actionable imple-
Coordination across multiple levels of government mentation plans and associated financing
has to be improved. strategies
There is a need for circular regulation and a more -- a key aspect of making the circular economy
structured framework of incentives. a reality is building knowledge, monitoring
progress and making sure that policy makers
Transnational co-creation of innovation, collabo- have the understanding, data and information
rative experimentation, and scaling up protocols they need
need further development in order to scale up any
Long term perspective is very important in innova-
innovation especially digitally.
tive Urban Circular Economy planning.
The opportunity to co-create self-sustaining model
through an open innovation driven, quadruple helix
style with service design approach to co-develop
and support social innovations to overcome institu-
tional barriers should be explored.
Role of capacity building and knowledge sharing is
crucial at a city level in fostering innovation pro-
cesses.

Full publication via EU Bookshop http://bookshop.europa.eu www.enoll.org @openlivinglabs