Check out the episode:

You can find the transcript through this link.

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Are you interested in investigating urban experiments?

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Debate of the article titled Interrogating urban experiments from 2016, by Federico Caprotti and Robert Cowley, published in the Urban Geography journal.

This is a great preparation to our next interview with Arman Mirzakhani in episode 372 talking about the importance of urban experimentation.

Since we are investigating the future of cities, I thought it would be interesting to see whether urban experimentations really live up to their names. This article presents urban experiments as a popular driving force for urban transitions, but also seven areas needing critical attention.

Find the article through this link.

Abstract: The notion of the “urban experiment” has become increasingly prevalent and popular as a guiding concept and trope used by both scholars and policymakers, as well as by corporate actors with a stake in the future of the city. In this paper, we critically engage with this emerging focus on “urban experiments”, and with its articulation through the associated concepts of “living labs”, “future labs”, “urban labs” and the like. A critical engagement with the notion of urban experimentation is now not only useful, but a necessity: we introduce seven specific areas that need critical attention when considering urban experiments: these are focused on normativity, crisis discourses, the definition of “experimental subjects”, boundaries and boundedness, historical precedents, “dark” experiments and non-human experimental agency.

Connecting episodes you might be interested in:

• No.271R – Experimentation or projectification of urban change? A critical appraisal and three steps forward
• No.293R – Rethinking the governance of urban infrastructural transformations: a synthesis of emerging approaches

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