Researchers, citizens and practitioners work side by side to test new solutions in real settings: a neighborhood, a city, a region.

In a new article in Consumption and Society, Antonietta Di Giulio and Rico Defila (Research Group Inter-/Transdisciplinarity, Department of Social Sciences) reflect on ten years of experience with this format. They trace where the format comes from, describe what makes it distinctive (interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and experimental work), and set out what these projects need in order to succeed.

The authors are also candid about the difficulties: Results are hard to scale. Projects have to earn societal legitimacy. Power imbalances between participants have to be managed, and experiments still have to meet scientific standards. There is also a temptation to favor outcomes that look good over outcomes that make a real difference. Each of these challenges exists elsewhere in research, but together they make real-world laboratories especially demanding.

Th full article is behind a paywall. The abstract is freely available.