10 lessons found to improve urban sustainability experiments

Cities around the world have been running experiments to respond to climate change and sustainability challenges such as new mobility trials, energy pilots, green space projects and circular economy approaches.

However, research from the Monash Business School has found that many of these efforts stay small, stay siloed or fade when funding ends.

Published in Nature Cities, the Monash research studied almost 2000 urban experiments and identified 10 lessons that focus on three areas: how experiments are designed and learned from; how power and decision-making shape them; and how they create lasting change.

Professor Rob Raven, from the Monash Business School, is a first author of the research, which suggests the conclusion is simple: experimentation should not be considered a side project anymore; it should be treated as a core way cities govern complex challenges, supported by long-term, cross-sector approaches and serious learning and evaluation.

“Our findings challenge the idea that urban experiments are simply small, temporary pilots that should either ‘scale up’ or be abandoned,” Raven said.

“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 everyday aspects of city life, from housing, energy, transport, green spaces, food systems and climate resilience.

The research found when experiments are well designed and governed, they can lead to more inclusive, liveable and sustainable cities. When poorly governed, they risk reinforcing inequalities, wasting public resources or delivering only superficial change.

The 10 lessons for urban experimentation from the Monash research are:

1. Integrate social, cultural, technical and ecological dimensions
2. Foster cross-sector learning
3. Balance professional and citizen expertise
4. Acknowledge the politics of experimentation
5. Challenge global north framing of concepts
6. Engage with the contested nature of collaborative learning
7. Embrace formal and emergent governance mechanisms
8. Adopt nuanced, pluralistic approaches to scaling
9. Recognise experimentation as permanent governance practice
10. Move beyond projectification

“Cities and local partners can use these findings to pause and reflect on how they run urban experiments, and whether those efforts are really delivering long-term change,” said Professor Megan Farrelly from Monash’s School of Social Sciences within the Faculty of Arts and a co-author of the study.

“This was an exciting collaboration, bringing together leading international scholars who have long been invested in advancing urban responses to climate change. This has led to an outcome that sets up an approach for current and future government decision-makers to get the most out of their innovative (experimental) efforts.”

The researchers said the 10 lessons provide a diagnostic framework to help identify strengths, gaps and missed opportunities. They also said the lessons are relevant beyond the city level, where state and federal governments can play a stronger role, not just by funding experiments, but by bringing cities together; helping lessons travel across places; and avoiding the constant ‘reinvention of the wheel’.

Image credit: iStock.com/metamorworks