Researchers from the IIIEE, Professor Kes McCormick and Senior Lecturer Yuliya Voytenko Palgan, have contributed to a new article on urban experimentation for sustainability published in Nature Cities. Drawing on nearly 2 000 urban experiments, the article - led by Professor Rob Raven of Monash Business School, Australia, and co-authored by several internationally recognised sustainability scholars - identifies ten lessons that explain why some experiments achieve lasting impact while others do not.
“The key findings of this article speak to the importance of urban experimentation in contributing to transformations over time and at local scales. In many ways, urban experiments have become a form of governing by bringing together a mix of stakeholders to engage in meaningful and impactful change processes” said Professor Kes McCormick.
The lessons centre on three key areas: how experiments are designed and the learning they generate, how power dynamics and decision‑making shape them, and how they create lasting change. The research reaches a clear conclusion: experimentation should no longer be viewed as a side project. Instead, it should be recognised as a core approach through which cities govern complex challenges supported by long‑term, cross‑sector collaboration and robust processes for learning and evaluation.
Urban experiments have become a form of governing by bringing together a mix of stakeholders to engage in meaningful and impactful change processes.
First author Professor Rob Raven said “our findings challenge the idea that urban experiments are simply small, temporary pilots that should either ‘scale up’ or be abandoned. Instead, we show that experimentation should be treated as an ongoing governance practice, embedded in how cities plan, make decisions, and learn over time. This shifts attention away from quick wins and one-off projects, towards building the institutional capacity, partnerships, and learning systems cities need to navigate uncertainty, tensions, and competing priorities.”
For the public, this matters because urban experiments shape many everyday aspects of city life, including housing, energy, transport, green spaces, food systems, and climate resilience.
The research shows that when experiments are well designed and effectively governed, they can help create more inclusive, liveable, and sustainable cities. However, when they are poorly governed, they risk reinforcing existing inequalities, wasting public resources, or producing only superficial change.
Ten lessons for urban experimentation
- Integrate social, cultural, technical and ecological dimensions
- Foster cross-sector learning
- Balance professional and citizen expertise
- Acknowledge the politics of experimentation
- Challenge global north framing of concepts
- Engage with the contested nature of collaborative learning
- Embrace formal and emergent governance mechanisms
- Adopt nuanced, pluralistic approaches to scaling
- Recognise experimentation as permanent governance practice
- Move beyond projectification
“We hope this work will be valuable not only for academia but also for municipalities and other urban actors involved in governing sustainability transformations and climate action across domains such as energy, mobility, housing, food, consumer goods, and the design of liveable, resilient urban spaces. The collaboration behind this article brought together insights from numerous research projects around the world over the past decade. It was truly a fun, enriching, and fruitful partnership among leading international scholars,” Senior Lecturer Yuliya Voytenko Palgan said.
It was truly a fun, enriching, and fruitful partnership among leading international scholars.
The ten lessons provide a diagnostic framework that helps identify strengths, gaps, and missed opportunities. They are also relevant beyond the city level. State and federal governments as well as the European Union can play a stronger role - not only by funding experiments, but by bringing cities together, supporting the transfer of lessons across places, and preventing the constant reinvention of the wheel.
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To read the paper, 'The future of urban experimentation through ten critical lessons from decades of practice’ please visit here.
