From Urban Living Labs Towards Critical Spatial Design: Decolonising Knowledge in Urban Design and Planning Using Critical Reflexivity

Abstract

Urban Living Labs (ULLs) are valorised for their participatory and user-centred processes which combine research and innovation in real-life communities and settings. They embrace different forms of knowledge by engaging diverse stakeholders while promoting experimentation in knowledge production. ULLs provide an ideal ecosystem to integrate analytical urban research with action-orientated architectural design to creatively and collaboratively shape urban futures. However, while urban researchers, designers, and policymakers have readily adopted the ULLs, there has been surprisingly little critical reflection on the epistemological assumptions underpinning the approach. This is a critique ever more urgent as ULLs spread globally and become a powerful tool in the context of knowledge production and urban innovation processes in the global South. The article sets out to problematise ULLs through decolonial theory in order to unearth the epistemic foundations that structure ways of knowing and subsequent courses of action. Critical reflexivity is engaged to analyse methodologically the ULL approach through the example of an integrated urban research and architectural design lab in the UK, with which the author was closely involved. With recourse to the literature, the analysis critically reflects on (1) the epistemological assumptions that structure ways of knowing and subsequent courses of action embedded in ULLs; and (2) the un/intentional reproduction of oppressive structures in ULLs. The article concludes by marking a path towards a new approach to ULLs founded on decoloniality, ecologies of knowledges, modes of situated un/re-learning, and critical hybridity integrating urban research and architectural design in a critical spatial design praxis. Keywords experimental urbanisms epistemologies of the south space architectural theory hybridity innovation transdisciplinary participation

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