Transformative experimentation with low-carbon development in the Stockholm region
Project title: Transformative experimentation with low-carbon development in the Stockholm region
Project leader:
Emilia Smeds
, SoM, KTH
Financing: Region Stockholm, KRN 2024-0157
Project period: 2025-01-01 - 2025-12-31
The project examines how ‘urban experiments’ can be financed, designed, organised, and managed in ways that maximise their positive impact for the Stockholm region’s low-carbon transformation and achievement of climate policy goals. Experiments are commonly understood as ‘pilot projects’ testing innovations, with the question being whether these short-term, small-scale interventions can contribute to longer-term, larger-scale transformative change. Out of the policy areas included in Region Stockholm’s regional development strategy (RUFS) and climate strategy (Klimatfärdplan 2050), the research focuses on experimentation with low-carbon development of the built environment, specifically CO2 emissions associated with buildings and public spaces between buildings.
Researchers and practitioners agree that upscaling of innovations is often hindered by so-called 'projectification', where experiments funded by short-term public sector grant funding fail to generate long-term impacts. Existing research by the Smeds and others has shown that adopt specific creative ways of designing, organising, and managing experiments to overcome and circumvent these challenges, and thus enhance their capacity to generate transformative outcomes.
The proposed project will examine the models used to fund/finance, design, organise, and develop partnerships for low-carbon development experimentation within municipalities in the Stockholm region, and reflect on whether strategies used for transformative outcomes in other city-regions could be used in the Stockholm region. The project also addresses a research gap regarding the connections between the innovations tested in individual experiments and strategic spatial planning processes at the municipal and regional levels.
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