Supporting Municipalities’ Design Capabilities Through Urban Experimentation

Cities are facing radical changes due to the simultaneous action of environmental, social, technical and regulatory factors. At the same time, they are the place where change happens and the main resources for change are available. In this context, cities are pressed to take action, but also to change their attitude towards urban innovation, shifting from a rational-administrative approach to a design-experimental one. An EU-funded project offered the opportunity for a collaboration between the project’s design team and public servants from 12 cities. This offers insights on the role of design resources in a sandboxing process, and on how this experimental approach can build design capabilities within public administrations (PA). The project’s design team supported public servants in figuring out the sandbox in its development phases; the outcomes of this collaboration are very different, given the variety of urban contexts and the level of embeddedness of design resources within PA.