A tale of urban experimentation in three Swedish municipalities

Abstract

Increasingly, cities and municipalities are involved in urban experimentation to meet current societal challenges. The expectations on local authorities to implement new ways of dealing with current challenges are high and raise questions of municipal capacity and governance structures, challenging more traditional ways of planning and policymaking. In this paper we have analysed three urban experiments related to transport and mobility in three Swedish municipalities and how they are governed and planned for. The study builds on qualitative interviews and document analysis. Our results show that the municipalities are working with urban experiments on different scales. All experiments are top-down experiments run by the municipalities, with limited citizen involvement. All experiments have become part of placemaking activities in the municipalities with the aim to support and promote both future visions and municipal sustainability work related to transport and planning. However, to date, the experiments have had limited outcomes, and planners express a concern for implementation and limited knowledge transfer within and between cities.