Enterprise: Living labs for better cities

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A new collaboration between students and local government hopes to provide a fresh
look at the big questions like food security, climate change and sustainable land use.

Massey University's School of People, Environment and Planning has teamed up with three city's councils to develop Living Lab projects - sustainable solutions to
environmental issues.

Dr Allanah Ryan, project leader and head of the school, says the concept and partnerships with Wellington City Council, Hawkes Bay Regional Council and Palmerston North City Council are the result of Massey's Challenging Sustainability project.

"This project proved that innovative solutions emerge when we bring together local government and diverse university disciplines - designers and social scientists working with city planners and community members - to create a space where we can look at complicated, thorny issues afresh."

The results so far are the likes of pop up gardens in Wellington's Kilbirnie and downtown Civic Square to experiment with how design can foster sustainable urban food systems and discussions with Palmerston North farmers to address the loss of productive land to lifestyle blocks.

Ryan says the collaborative approach is an attempt to break down academic silos and create a flexible way for local government and the university to work together.

"Regional councils have the strictures of the Resource Management Act to worry about; city and district councils have district plan changes to manage; university researchers focus on producing good science and design. We all recognise the need to connect better with each other, but our differing funding, organisational structures and timeframes for action can make this difficult. Living Lab is an attempt to overcome some of these barriers, by providing local government and the university with a flexible way to come together and create projects that academics, students and council staff can work on together."

Projects such as developing communications strategies for a central Hawkes Bay water storage project are likely to be one-offs and tailored to the needs of the council involved.

"A project might start with an unconference: a session or series of sessions where council staff, academics, students and maybe community people meet and converse in an open-ended way about an issue," says Ryan.

"Then we might deploy student researchers to dig into the issues more deeply. Sustainable solutions emerge through analysing research results, applying creative minds, and lots of dialogue."

Project teams involved in developing the Living Lab included academics and students from the fields of sociology, geography, planning, spatial design and agri-business.