Living labs for transitions in urban freight transport systems

The complexity of urban freight systems means that it is essential for the public and private sectors to work together to make a transition towards a more sustainable system. Freight partnerships foster mutual understanding among urban freight stakeholders; by adopting the concepts of shared situational awareness and joint knowledge production, the freight partnerships can be developed into the concept of a living laboratory. The living lab approach improves the co-creation processes and allows for a more inclusive innovation preparation and deployment process. Starting from a joint transition roadmap, the living lab creates a dynamic test environment where complex urban freight transport innovations can be implemented, following improvement cycles. This implies flexibility to make changes during the transition process, but with the shared end goal in mind. We illustrate the living lab concept on examples from collaborations in the EU project CITYLAB, from the Dutch City Logistics living lab CILOLAB and the Italian urban freight transport living lab TRELAB.