REPAiR: REsource Management in Peri-urban AReas: Going Beyond Urban Metabolism: D 5.1: PULLs Handbook

REPAiR will provide local and regional authorities with an innovative transdisciplinary open source Geodesign Decision Support Environment (GDSE) developed and implemented in Living Labs (LLs) context, in six metropolitan areas namely Naples, Ghent, Hamburg, Pécs, Łódź and Amsterdam. LLs are physical and virtual environments, in which public-private-people partnerships experiment an iterative method to develop innovations, that include the involvement of end users. In LLs different areas of expertise from diverse partners are needed for a good development of the activities, with the aim to meet the need of the stakeholders by innovation. The innovation concept here is used in the sense of a difference between an existing entity (a product, a policy, a service, etc.) and customers’ expectations. The elements of innovation can be technological factors, better working conditions or methods of entity delivery, etc., because to innovate means to be creative, learning from mistakes. This means also to learn and share information about what went wrong, in order to use it in upcoming phases. LLs are approaches and instruments, at the same time, to improve the innovation capabilities and competitiveness of territories. Thanks to the LL approach, policy makers can face the many socio-economic challenges of their territories, improving social inclusion. Typically useful for the interpretation of complex real life environments, LLs are recognized as users-friendly instruments and processes to promote open innovation in several European regions. In this way complex solutions are identified, tested and transformed into prototypes (Innovation Alcotra, 2013). In other words, an LL is a “user-driven open innovation ecosystem” (EC, 2009) that utilizes the fruitful participation of business, citizens and governments in the research process; this approach is helpful in order to better define the current behaviors and user patterns. Co-creation, one of the main and transversal components of an LL, is the process that produces a product or a service as a result of a cooperation between the collaboration of end-users and other stakeholders that work in the common environment of LL (Innovation Alcotra, 2013). Cities as complex systems, characterized by Urban Metabolism and increasing challenges, demand co-creation (Gemeente Rotterdam, IABR, FABRIC, JCFO, & TNO, 2014). LLs identify sustainable activities that are coherent with the territory and competitive in some ways if compared with global economies, and put them in contact with the ones that already exist in the same area. In REPAiR, Living Labs are organized in six peri-urban areas across Europe, as stated above, as decision support environments where representatives of universities, governance, corporations, local communities and, in addition, individuals make decisions that are based on their role and expertise. In this framework, design professionals, information technologists and scientists give contributions and support the decision-making process related to what to do and how to do that in each case study area. In order to make a decision that must be site specific, it is necessary to identify and compare several opportunities and alternatives that should be developed in the Peri-Urban Living Labs (PULLs), after the knowledge and evaluation of the current situation of the place. The different disciplines involved in the PULL have different methods that can interact, to imagine and select change models that work at different scales simultaneously.