A Review of an Urban Living Lab Initiative

In 2016 the city of Turin, Italy, launched the Torino Living Lab initiative. By using the urban Living Lab approach, with firms, public bodies, universities, and communities collaborating to co-create innovation, Turin aims to encourage, attract, and foster a growing and inclusive innovation environment. This article describes the efforts that Turin has made to design the initiative and presents a structured methodology to assess its results. The expectations and objectives of the initiative’s utilizers and the characteristics, impressions, habits, and behaviors of the citizens were collected before the initiative through a series of semi- structured interviews and a survey. By comparing the obtained results with similar post-mortem measurements, it is possible to assess the success of the initiative and evaluate its impacts. Finally, this study present interesting policy takeaways for cities wanting to implement urban Living Labs and identify best practices for their design, implementation, and management.