Cities as Living Labs Flyer

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 projects focusing on circular economy at city-level in the context of Living Labs through publically available data sources and case studies and to: • Evaluate how cities have elaborated and implemented urban strategies in the context of three circular economy dimensions: -- sustainable use of resources, natural and cultural capital -- circular mobility -- resource efficient buildings and urban spaces

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• To describe how the cities mobilise and interact with various system innovation dimensions including Living Labs.

• To get a better understanding of the impact of the EU funding especially from Horizon 2020 (H2020) and the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) projects focusing on circular economy at the city-level in the context of Living Labs.

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European Cities participated in the study to get an overview of the Circular economy strategy and projects. cities (Helsinki, Manresa, Lisbon, Eindhoven, Riga) selected for an in-depth case study to identify good & bad practices, the benefits and barriers of the EU funded R&I projects in order to make recommendations for developing future EU R&I funding instruments. policy recommendations 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 somewhat challenging. New projects are mainly grounded on the existing relationships and new connections between actors that don’t 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 innovations” and “citizen’s 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 instruments 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 Economy 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 approach.

• There is a need to promote new business models and alternative sources of funding at city level.

• It is important to target transversal and holistic approaches in funding programmes.

• Coordination across multiple levels of government has to be improved.

• There is a need for circular regulation and a more structured framework of incentives.

• Transnational co-creation of innovation, collaborative experimentation, and scaling up protocols need further development in order to scale up any innovation especially digitally.

• 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 institutional barriers should be explored.

• Circular development monitoring and reporting has to be made in a formal network of action. Through the study it has been discovered that: -- there is a need for a common definition of Circular Economy -- stakeholders have to be supported in translating specific strategies into actionable implementation plans and associated financing strategies -- a key aspect of making the circular economy a reality is building knowledge, monitoring progress and making sure that policy makers have the understanding, data and information they need • Long term perspective is very important in innovative Urban Circular Economy planning.

• Role of capacity building and knowledge sharing is crucial at a city level in fostering innovation processes.

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