Urban Living Labs, a platformisation of smart cities as levers for open innovations experimentations[Les Urban Living Labs, une plateformisation des villes intelligentes comme leviers d’expérimentations d’innovations ouvertes]

Situated at the frontier of innovation management and urban geography, this paper analyses the implementation of smart city strategies led by local public actors who rely on urban experimentation and Urban Living Labs (ULLs). It sheds empirical light on their role in open innovation processes at the city level. Our research is based on the analysis of sociotechnical experimentations that feed the urban strategies of European metropolises, and on the role of the ‘third-party actors' that accompany them, the ULLs. Our empirical materials result from a qualitative study of two experimental projects located in the United Kingdom (‘Careview' project) and in France (‘Tierce Forêt' project). Within this framework, we defend the following theory: ULLs use their intermediation position to centralise knowledge and operate a form of control over the innovations deployed in the city (experimentations), and to initiate its platformisation. By supporting the deployment of urban experimentations, these sociotechnical systems (ULLs) help to increase social acceptability and local ownership of the services tested (territorialisation); by supervising socioeconomic players and their offers, they contribute to setting in motion a process of formalisation of the city (perpetuation of offers, networking, deterritorialisation, etc.). These processes are part of the more general framework of so-called smart city strategies and organise the distributed emergence of local innovations.