DUT City Panel: Cities Learning From Cities

Cities across Europe are key partners in DUT projects. It is with their support that researchers are testing new approaches to governance and social change. In the latest Online City Panel, city representatives from Trento, Bielefeld, Winterthur and Malmö shared their practical experiences from DUT projects.

Lesson 1: Try experimenting with temporary measures 

Temporary measures and pilot projects were seen as particularly useful. These measures lower the threshold for innovation, make change visible to citizens, and turn abstract strategies into tangible experiences. Importantly, experimentation also creates space to make mistakes and to learn from them. 

In Winterthur, living labs have been used to co‑create ideas for public spaces with residents, students and businesses. Vicente Carabias shared how they used a free software, and encouraged any city to ask the Open Urbanism Foundation to use it. “Cities can unlock innovation by giving citizens the tools to imagine and shape their future,” said Vicente Carabias, MULTIGINATION project partner from City of Winterthur.  

Lesson 2: Build strong partnerships 

Several speakers emphasised that European research and innovation projects offer a unique framework to build relationships between cities, universities, civil society, businesses and citizens. However, but that collaboration requires time, trust and continuous effort. 

Living labs, urban experiments and participatory platforms were repeatedly mentioned as effective ways to bring actors together, test ideas and learn collectively. At the same time, speakers were also aware about the internal coordination challenges this creates for municipalities. 

“The administration is made of people, and starting and building up relationships there should be a tool to make this relationship building easier,” shared Gaia Maronilli, SURFIT project partner from City of Trento 

Lesson 3: Create spaces for discussing the use of public space 

Beyond technical solutions, speakers underlined that governance is a decisive factor in urban transformation. Cities must actively steer processes, mediate between competing interests and make choices. Olaf Lewald, from the city of Bielefeld, reframed conflict as a source of learning rather than something to avoid. Differences in values, habits and expectations often become visible in public space, especially when change happens at different speeds.  

“It is important to make conflict visible and creating spaces where conflicts can be openly discussed. By creating these spaces, municipalities can address conflicts proactively rather than reactively”, said Olaf Lewald, CONFLICTEDSTREETS project partner from the city of Bielefeld 

Lesson 4: Check assumptions in city strategies 

Connecting projects to existing city strategies can help to transfer results after the project ends. In Malmö, increasing renewable energy production is part of the city strategy. Christoffer Orinius, PED StepWise project partner, shared how they tried to estimate the electricity production potential of solar panels in new buildings. Unexpectedly, "even assuming 70% of the roof area are covered by solar panels, the district does not reach self-sufficiency at any point in the year in Malmö", he said. 

In Malmö, work on positive energy districts projects has shown both the potential and the limits of the city’s ambitions, and the importance of focusing not only on energy production but also energy planning more generally across several districts in the city.