Paper short abstract:

This paper confronts the tensions between formal and informal learning processes in urban mobility experimentation. It argues that whereas formalization of experimental learning likely improves upscaling, less formal embodied knowledge production may offer advantages that should not be overlooked.

Paper long abstract:

This paper confronts the tensions between formal and informal learning processes in urban mobility experimentation. Recent scholarship on Urban Living Lab (ULL) experiments has foregrounded learning as central to the success of these endeavours. With its processual and experiential qualities ULL experimental learning could be characterized as an alternative means of building ‘bodies’ of transformative urban knowledge. However, the ‘success’ of ULLs and their knowledge production can be interpreted in multiple ways, and some have suggested that the failure of many experiments to ‘scale up’ is indicative of insufficiently formalized learning processes. Drawing on both epistemological and pedagogic theory, as well as empirical data from two research projects that investigate grassroots and ULL mobility infrastructure experiments in Maastricht, London, and São Paulo, we argue that whereas formalization of urban experimental learning processes is likely to improve scaling, the importance of the embodied knowledge associated with immersive experience should not be overlooked. This is because the informal dimensions of learning, such as playfulness, unpredictability, or unfolding connectivity may build situated, tacit knowledge as equally motivating and guiding as the ossified knowledge acquired through more formal learning processes.