The Experimental City

This book explores how the concept or urban experimentation is being used to reshape practices of knowledge production in urban debates about resilience, climate change governance, and socio-technical transitions.

With contributions from leading scholars, and case studies from the Global North and South, from small- to large-scale cities, this book suggests that urban experiments offer novel modes of engagement, governance, and politics that both challenge and complement conventional strategies. The book is organized around three cross-cutting themes. Part I explores the logics of urban experimentation, different approaches, and how and why they are deployed. Part II considers how experiments are being staged within cities, by whom, and with what effects. Part III examines how entire cities or groups of cities are constructed as experiments.

This book develops a deeper and more socially and politically nuanced understanding of how urban experiments shape cities and drive wider changes in society, providing a framework to examine the phenomenon of urban experimentation in conceptual and empirical detail.

Author Biography

James Evans is a Professor of Geography at the School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, UK.

Andrew Karvonen is Assistant Professor in Urban and Regional Studies at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

Rob Raven is Professor of Institutions and Transitions at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.