A tale of urban experimentation in three Swedish municipalities

ABSTRACT Increasingly, cities and municipalities are involved in urban experimentation to meet current societal challenges. The expectations on local authorities to implement new ways of dealing with current challenges are high and raise questions of municipal capacity and governance structures, challenging more traditional ways of planning and policymaking. In this paper we have analysed three urban experiments related to transport and mobility in three Swedish municipalities and how they are governed and planned for. The study builds on qualitative interviews and document analysis. Our results show that the municipalities are working with urban experiments on different scales. All experiments are top-down experiments run by the municipalities, with limited citizen involvement. All experiments have become part of placemaking activities in the municipalities with the aim to support and promote both future visions and municipal sustainability work related to transport and planning. However, to date, the experiments have had limited outcomes, and planners express a concern for implementation and limited knowledge transfer within and between cities.


Introduction
Due to the shortcomings of national and international sustainability agreements and goals, there has been a significant shift towards implementing climate change initiatives at the urban level, as cities are regarded as pivotal in transitioning towards more sustainable societies (e.g.Fuenfschilling, Frantzeskaki, and Coenen 2019;Angelo and Wachsmuth 2020).There is also a consensus that the problems and challenges of climate change cannot simply be tackled with current mindsets of traditional planning practices (Albrechts, Barbanente, and Monno 2020;Wolfram, Borgström, and Farrelly 2019).In this paper, we focus on urban experimentation as this has become a common planning practice with the aim to innovate, learn and gain experience to cope with complex urban problems and to achieve climate and sustainability goals (e.g.Bulkeley et al. 2019;Evans, Karvonen, and Raven 2016;Evans and Karvonen 2014).Urban experiments can be seen as designed spaces where risk-taking and strategic efforts to reimagine, influence and modify alternative planning futures by an openness to unexpected events are taking place (Karvonen, Evans, and van Heur 2014;Evans 2016).Former studies point to urban experimentation as facilitating key elements of sustainability transitions including networking, new collaborations and alliances, shared visions and learning processes (Fuenfschilling, Frantzeskaki, and Coenen 2019;Madsen and Hansen 2019;Roebke, Grillitsch, and Coenen 2022).Even though such initiatives champion co-creation and broad stakeholder involvement they are not neutral forms of collaboration.Rather they are often top-down initiated and chosen by actors and institutions involved in urban governance (Bulkeley et al. 2016).Urban experimentation has also been criticized for its strain to stimulate broader transformations (Evans et al. 2021) and for being growth-oriented, neo-managerial and driven by narrow notions of best-practice that are socially and spatially selective (Rosol, Béal, and Mössner 2017).The development of urban experimentation is also changing the role of municipalities and what politicians and civil servants do (Kronsell and Mukhtar-Landgren 2018;Mukhtar-Landgren et al. 2019), and raises questions of municipal capacity and governance structures (Castán Broto et al. 2019).In addition, urban experimentation has seldom been investigated from an urban planning perspective (Scholl and de Kraker 2021a;2021b).
With this background, the aim of this paper is to examine how Swedish municipalities are using urban experimentation as a planning tool to reach local climate goals.We will exemplify this by analysing three examples of urban experimentation related to transport and mobility planning, namely Electrivillage in Mariestad, U-bike in Umeå, and Gothenburg Green City Zone in Gothenburg.The reason for this focus is that many urban experiments connected to mobility planning take the form of testbed planning where new technological solutions are tried out (Docherty, Marsden, and Anable 2018).New technologies within this domain are often thought of as 'disruptive', i.e. they are expected to change the current system and provide consumers with 'new' smarter mobility solutions towards sustainability (Marsden and Reardon 2018).However, although many initiatives have the potential for change, policy initiatives tend to be less radical than what they could be (Isaksson 2014).
The aim here is not to evaluate whether the experiments have the potential to change current pathways towards more sustainable futures, i.e. whether they have transformative capacity or not.Instead, we are interested in understanding how municipalities are using and working with urban experiments as planning tools towards sustainability.The following research questions guide the paper: I. How are the municipalities using urban experiments as planning tools to reach municipal sustainability goals?II.How are the urban experiments governed and planned for and how is this changing current planning practices in the municipalities?
The first research question will be explored in relation to how municipal planners are relating the experiments as means to reach the municipal climate goals.The second question is answered by examining what role the municipalities take in experimentation in terms of the development and promotion of the experiments, i.e. how they are planned and governed.
The article is structured as follows.Firstly, we present an overview on research on experimental governance and urban experimentation and how this is creating new institutional arrangements which in turn changes the role and capacity of municipalities in their approach to achieve towards more sustainable futures.Thereafter we present the methods and our empirical materials.This is followed by two analysis subsections, steered by the study's research questions, and a concluding discussion.

Experimental governance and urban experimentation
Experimental governance has become common practice for municipalities dealing with climate change issues (Bulkeley et al. 2016;Bylund, Riegler, and Wrangsten 2022), where urban experiments are frequently used as a planning tool to achieve sustainability goals and as sustainability interventions for transformation (Eneqvist and Karvonen 2021;Evans, Karvonen, and Raven 2016;Bulkeley et al. 2019).There is a belief that experimentation opens up for new sustainable solutions and that these can easily be scaled up and transferred to other contexts (van Winden and van den Buuse 2017) eventually generating a broader system change (e.g.Geels 2011;Hodson and Marvin 2009), where municipalities might act as promoters, enablers and partners in their role to change current pathways.Hence, experimental governance refers to the ways municipalities are governing, directing, and developing planning through different kinds of experiments.As a result, recent literature on experimental governance has called attention to the changing role of municipalities in their legitimacy as decision-makers (Eneqvist et al. 2022;Kronsell and Mukhtar-Landgren 2018;Hofstad and Vedeld 2021) as experimentation changes the function of municipalities in several ways (Berglund-Snodgrass and Mukhtar-Landgren 2020;Mukhtar-Landgren et al. 2019).For example, experimentation challenges more traditional ways to govern, through formal rules and regulations (e.g.master planning and policy making) towards more strategic functions (building on collaboration and networks) related to urban planning (Agger and Sørensen 2016).It is important to recognize, however, that the municipal organization can vary in terms of responsibility and competencies, and that priorities might shift over time (Bulkeley et al. 2019;Bulkeley and Castan Broto 2013).Traditionally, municipalities have established mechanisms of governance, e.g. through master planning, policy making and regulations for development and change.They have also been structured hierarchically, vertically and as a sectorised organization with a strong silo orientation that uses formal rules to control (Agger and Sørensen 2016).Experimental governance is rather the opposite, structured more horizontally and collaboratively, with distributed responsibilities (Pierre 2011).As such, experimental governance includes both policy experiments to decrease silo thinking within the municipal organizations and to increase collaborations with other actors to act together towards sustainability, but also more concrete interventions in urban space.This includes urban experiments in e.g.living labs, testbeds, platforms and innovation districts, where different stakeholders collaboratively try out solutions for a desirable future (Bulkeley and Castan Broto 2013;Evans and Karvonen 2014;Fuenfschilling, Frantzeskaki, and Coenen 2019).In this way, urban experimentation also provides a mean by which actors in practice present specific imaginaries and visions for the future (Bulkeley et al. 2016).
Urban experiments can be used to design, test and learn from innovation in real time to respond to sustainability issues in a specific place (Bulkeley et al. 2016).They vary in purpose, scope and size, but share some characteristics such as the ways they are organized.
Experiments are often organized and arranged temporarily, at a specific place and time as projects.Even though one of the aims with urban experiments is to find permanent solutions to current challenges, they are often part of what Fred et al. (2018) describe as a shift in the municipal organization towards 'projectification'.As with experimentation, projects are often used as a means for local development, or to deal with complex problems that cannot be dealt with within ordinary work of the municipality.The aim is to combine sustainability, innovation, co-creation and learning to address complex sustainability issues at the local scale (Bulkeley et al. 2016;Bylund, Riegler, and Wrangsten 2022).Hence, urban experiments can be important planning tools to facilitate co-creative and innovative solutions to deal with problems, within for example mobility and sustainability, and to empower different actors to deal with urban problems, regeneration community resilience or job creation (Bulkeley et al. 2019;von Wirth et al. 2019;Wolfram 2018).However, although experimentation focuses on co-creation, there is a risk that the roles and responsibilities of the involved stakeholders become unclear, which in turn raises questions of conflicting interests and power dynamics in such processes.It also raises questions about the role of the public sector, i.e. the municipalities as serving the public good, such as protecting public values, accountability, equity and efficiency (Eneqvist et al. 2022).In addition, experiments are often criticized because of their limited scale, and the difficulties to extract lessons that can be applied elsewhere, and in a different context (Evans and Karvonen 2014;Karvonen, Evans, and van Heur 2014).When it comes to planning, the notion of risk-taking in urban experimentation is also contrasting, as the foundational premise in urban planning is to provide predictability and long-term stability, but where experimentation is rather used for going 'beyond business as usual' (Berglund-Snodgrass and Mukhtar-Landgren 2020).
Based on the above discussions on the role of experiments and experimental governance to deliver transformative capacity in Swedish municipalities we will examine how the municipalities use experiments as a strategic tool in urban planning.Analytically, we firstly examine the urban experiments in relation to municipal climate goals and visions and how they relate to the three cases of urban experiments undertaken by the municipalities.Mainly, urban experimentation is expected to contribute to achieving the sustainability goals in line with Agenda 2030 and the Paris agreement or to meet the Swedish national climate targets of zero net greenhouse gas emissions in 2045.We argue that municipalities use such visions to positions themselves within a specific policy arena.Challenges are often formulated through visions and can be a way for the municipality to communicate the municipality's positions to other organizations (Mukhtar-Landgren et al. 2019).Visions of climate or carbon neutral cities are also boundary setting as they inevitably require a re-imagination and delineation of a city's boundaries, both in relation to geographical and historical boundaries as representing a shift in policy but also by the inclusion and exclusion of certain groups (Kenis and Lievens 2017).In a similar manner, experiments give rise to new forms of political spaces, where boundaries between public and private interests are blurred (Bulkeley and Castan Broto 2013).As such visions are often used as planning tools for change (Albrechts, Barbanente, and Monno 2020), as it is through visions that planning actions can shape and frame a place and what it might become in the future (Albrechts 2006), and as drivers to steer local change towards long-term collective urban planning goals (Eneqvist and Karvonen 2021).However, there is a risk that such visionary work is not more than a framework for consensual projects for urban renewal and city marketing and place branding (Kenis and Lievens 2017).
Secondly, we examine the three experiments more closely, looking at how they are governed and planned for by the municipalities.There is a consensus about the vital role that local governments can play in creating the right institutional conditions towards sustainability through policy (Bulkeley and Castan Broto 2013;Warbroek and Hoppe 2017).However, few municipalities have pursued a comprehensive, planned approach to climate governance through experimentation.Most have encountered significant challenges related to institutional capacity and political economy (Bulkeley 2010).There, is also little understanding of whether the experiments formed by local governments and actors deliver transformative capacity and how this could be developed.This includes, for example, to analyse new governance arrangements demanding new skills and areas of expertise among public actors, as they need to understand both the drivers of private actors and their business models, and how the functions of new technologies are related to fulfilling sustainability goals (Wallsten, Henriksson, and Isaksson 2021).By not only analysing strategy development, discourse and policy, but also focusing on the ways urban experiments are governed and planned for this can also help us to understand why and with what implications such experimentation takes place in the municipalities (Bulkeley and Castan Broto 2013).

Cases and methods
In Sweden there are three administrative levels: state, region (county) and municipality.Our focus in this paper is on the local (municipal) level, as it has been singled out as a key scale for experimentation addressing climate change challenges and radical innovation.Starting from a larger mapping of climate strategies, goals and visions in all of the municipalities that are part of the Swedish Innovation Programme Viable Cities, 1 the three municipalities Gothenburg, Umeå and Mariestad were singled out as case studies for this paper.As the program encourages experimentation in policymaking as well as in planning processes, the participating municipalities should all be proactive in their planning approach as they are supposed to embrace various modes of experimentation.The municipalities were also chosen as they vary in size and geographical location.Mariestad is a mid-size municipality with only 24 768 inhabitants in the Midwest of Sweden.Umeå is in the northern parts of the country with a population of 130 997.Gothenburg is on the west coast of Sweden and is the second-largest city in Sweden with 578 549 inhabitants.
Compared to many other countries, municipalities in Sweden, have a monopoly on land-use planning, meaning that they are entitled to decide when and where urban development takes place within the municipal borders (Persson 2013).The municipalities often have a spatial planning department responsible for the formal stage of developing strategic plans and programmes, and additionally, there is also often a specific department responsible for working with traffic and mobility as well as a specific environmental department.This means that sustainability work is often spread out over several departments (Trygg and Wenander 2022).

Methods and materials
The empirical material builds on qualitative data from interviews and document analysis of strategic policy documents.The data was collected and analysed by the two authors.In total ten semi-structured interviews with key officials were conducted between 2022 and 2023 (see Table 1).The interviews lasted for approximately one hour and were recorded and transcribed in Swedish.Quotes were later translated into English by the authors.The interviews covered themes such as the municipal climate and environmental goals and visions with a focus on transport and mobility planning and urban experiments, planning for climate change, work practices, expertise and roles, and what kind of strategies and tools the planners used and dealt with.The interviews were analysed and coded using the software program Nvivo (e.g.Saldaña 2013).After the first round of interviews, we identified one major experiment in each municipality.Thus, these examples were pointed out by the respondents themselves as important projects, all related to mobility and transport planning, within the municipalities.Consequently, the first round of interviews was complemented with another round of interviews with key officials working with the specific cases in each of the municipalities.This round also included more specific questions about each of the experiments concerning their relation to overall climate goals and visions in each of the cities, their development, organization, promotion, citizen involvement and what tools and resources the project co-ordinators had at hand.
In addition to the interviews, we conducted a document analysis of strategic documents such as the climate city contracts, comprehensive plans, traffic strategies and/or plans in each of the municipalities (Table 1).These documents were systematically examined to analyse the municipalities climate goals and visions and their relation to the experiments undertaken in the municipalities.In Sweden, mobility policies and comprehensive planning policies are often separated, although the comprehensive plan often steers the future directionality of spatial planning in the municipality.In addition, we also included documents and municipal webpages that discussed or reported on the three experiments.

Three tales of urban experimentation
Spatial planning often involves taking part in policymaking and working with consultants, civil servants, and academia.However, new forms of collaborative and networked As the three examples of urban experimentation will show, Swedish municipalities are increasingly using urban space as assets for experimentation in testbeds, demonstration arenas and pilots in a real-world setting (see also Algehed et al. 2019a;Eneqvist and Karvonen 2021).
4.1.Urban experimentation as planning tools to reach sustainability goals?
This section presents how the three cases of urban experimentation are used as strategic planning tools that aim to support the municipal climate and sustainability goals.As we are interested in the municipal role in urban experiments the experiments presented here are primarily initiated by municipal organizations and can be seen as top-down urban experiments.
'Electrivillage' is a test and demonstration site in Mariestad municipality.It focuses on experimentation in four areas: renewable energy systems; sustainable transport systems; logistics and purchasing and sustainable business development.Electrivillage is described as the 'municipality's concept as a testing and demonstration platform for sustainable transition and industrial renewal'.Several projects have been tested, from electric charging rails to the development of hydrogen gas.However, it is the latter that has been turned into the main demonstration site when a solar panel-driven tank station for hydrogen gas was built in 2019.At the time this was one of the first solar panel hydrogen gas stations in the world, something that has also been heavily promoted by the municipality.When the municipality became part of the innovation program Viable Cities in 2021, Electrivillage was closely tied to the municipal participation in the program as an experimental arena.One aspect of Viable Cities is to steer local policies towards climate neutrality i.e. to reach zero net greenhouse gas emissions, firstly by 2030, through what are termed climate city contracts, signed by the participating municipalities.The contracts can be seen as a tool for climate governance as they are an agreement between municipalities, public authorities, and Viable Cities to accelerate the transformation towards climate neutrality in the participating cities.In that way the innovation program as such is also supporting new forms of political spaces and networked forms of governance (Bulkeley and Castan Broto 2013), with already set climate goals.Notably, for Mariestad, the local politicians have chosen to keep the number of steering policy documents down.Therefore, participation in Viable Cities and the climate contracts, where the municipality sets the municipal climate goals, was pointed out as important governance tools for local officials working with sustainability matters as this is the only document that clearly states the municipal sustainability ambitions and the local climate policy.
'U-bike', in Umeå, is an electric cargo bike pool that was set up by Umeå municipality as a pilot project between 2017 and 2020.It is, however, still running on a yearly basis.The project was initiated as a small-scale pilot to reach one of the municipality's climate goals, where at least 65% of journeys within the town-centre of the municipality should be by sustainable transport in 2025.The municipal goals and visions have supported the municipality's work to test and implement different mobility interventions, such as redesigning streets, construction of new city districts and making more space for sustainable modes of transport where U-bike is one planning tool together with other planning interventions.Hence, the set transport goals support a re-imagination of the city centre supporting a shift to more sustainable travels implemented through new mobility interventions and planning tools.
In 2023, the cargo bike pool consisted of two main hubs, the Garage at Umeå University, which was the first hub, and one at 'Cykelstället' (in English 'The Bike Rack'), the main bike node in the city centre.At that time, there were in total of 16 bikes.As this project is a small-scale pilot it has not been developed in collaboration with other actors.However, the Garage at Umeå University was set up in collaboration with Akademiska hus (a state-owned property company) that offered the municipality a place for the bikes for free.The location of Cykelstället was initially a site for a multistorey residential building with offices and flats.However, as the building was in poor condition it was demolished, and the space was turned into a testbed to encourage sustainable travel focusing on cyclists and to test different services that had not been used so far in the municipality.
'Gothenburg Green City Zone'is a large-scale demonstration project that started at the beginning of 2021 to focus on the 'Future transport system'.In contrast to the other two experiments, Gothenburg Green City Zone is run by Business Region Göteborg (BRG), which is a public utility owned by the City of Gothenburg.BRG is also the local industry office in the city involving the management and coordination of local development interventions (Hermelin and Trygg 2021).The project covers three 'zones' that are representative of three different geographies in the city: Lindholmen, which is thought of as an area of workplaces; Evenemangsstråket, a district with a large number of events and fairs, and Forsåker, which is a 'typical' residential area.There are several small-scale testbeds planned in the different zones.The aim of using three different areas has been part of developing 'real-world laboratories' for the industry and business sector in the Gothenburg region to develop and test new services or products.
One important aspect of Gothenburg Green City Zone is its relation to the climate goals of the city of Gothenburg.The initiative started just before the city adopted their latest climate goals, but the municipal climate goals were pointed out important tools to accelerate the city's transition towards climate neutrality in 2030, but also the work for BRG.In comparison to many other municipalities in Sweden, the climate goals in Gothenburg are set for the overall municipal organization, i.e. they comprise both city administration and municipal public utilities.In this case, the delineation and re-imagination of specific geographical areas (Kenis and Lievens 2017) is closely tied to the goal of Gothenburg Green City Zone to create the city's first emission-free zone(s) through emission-free transports and transport efficiency.The city's climate goals are a 90% reduction of CO 2 emissions and a 25% reduction in traffic.The ambition is to find solutions that can transition the local transport systems in the zones to be emission-free by 2030, which can also steer future planning interventions towards such a goal (Albrechts 2006).As one of the main tasks of BRG, in its role as local industry office, is to support firms and industries in the Gothenburg region, this clearly shows how the boundaries between public and private interests become blurred and realized by testing new solutions in real-world settings (Bulkeley and Castan Broto 2013).
In all municipalities, the interviewees see the municipal climate goals as important governance tools to push for an overall transformation in each of the cities, as they can be used as arguments towards more sustainable mobility and transport systems.As pointed out in one of the interviews: It is really important to have an overarching goal to lean back on when you have to argument for your thing.The whole city planning process is a matter of compromises between different departments in the municipality.[…] There are so many things, and different wills that should be part of these development projects, so you need to have some mandate to push for important matters and that these must be part of the planning process.(Transport planner, Umeå) In that way, the local climate goals and urban experiments are closely tied to urban development and local planning processes.This is also related to the ways the experiments are used to position the municipal organizations within specific policy arenas.

Urban experiments as policy arenas and place brands
In Mariestad establishing Electrivillage as a demonstration arena supported local officials to work with urban experimentation in specific fields outside the more rigid municipal structures (Berglund-Snodgrass and Mukhtar-Landgren 2020).However, as the development of the hydrogen station and the local production of hydrogen gas became famous internationally it was mainly the hydrogen station that was promoted within the overall concept of Electrivillage: Then, when we saw that we had placed this on the map we felt we had succeeded with what we wanted.It is always difficult to get known in your own place, so we had to do this outside the municipality, and we have.We have had thousands of people listening to this in different contexts and when we felt that now we have made it, we have put Mariestad on the map with this and we have also given something back to the city when we are doing this kind of investment.(Local official, Mariestad) To some extent, this is also visible in the climate contracts (2022; 2023) where the legacy of the hydrogen gas station was further developed by pushing for the development of fuel cell cars as the municipality envisioned more people driving fuel cell cars in the future.The aim was to establish a car-sharing service for fuel cell cars together with an established car company in the municipality and with the help of test groups and ambassadors promote car-sharing services as well as fuel cell cars in the municipality to reduce the overall car ownership.The idea or vision of fuel cell cars also led to the initiation of other related projects.For example, since 2022, the municipality runs a day care that is self-dependent on electricity.The system works in the same way as the tank station, i.e. with the help of solar panels on the roof, where the surplus energy is turned into hydrogen gas to be stored and turned into energy in winter.There have also been suggestions from the municipality to use hydrogen as fuel to run the trains on the Kinnekulle railway line (in Swedish Kinnekullebanan).
Initially, U-bike was set up to offer citizens access to electric cargo bikes.The project was initiated as a testbed to see if citizens would choose electric cargo bikes as an alternative to the car for shorter trips in central parts of the city.As the experiment was developed as an initiative from the politicians in the technical board in the municipality the project can be interpreted as a more traditional planning initiative.However, the temporality of the project and the aim of serving as a real-world testbed for electric cargo-bikes by encouraging citizens to use more sustainable transport modes and to reduce car usage (Umeå kommun 2020a) points to a change in the ways municipalities work with experimentation as planning tools to reach climate goals.At the time of the political decision, electric cargo bikes were not widely known in the city.The purpose was partially to facilitate travels for people without a car, and partially to offer citizens the possibility to try different cargo-bikes and hopefully create interest in buying one of their own.Another aspect was to push for property owners to offer attractive and modern living conditions to their residents and to reduce future parking demands (Umeå kommun 2020b).As such, U-bike has been important in supporting sustainable travels in the city and the of Umeå as a 'bike city'.U-bike has also been part of several other projects and has in that way functioned as a symbol for urban renewal in Umeå and as part of the city's image as a sustainable city.
In difference to the two other experiments, Gothenburg Green City Zone was initiated as a result of wishes from the local industries in collaboration with BRG (as representatives of the City of Gothenburg), RISE and Volvo Cars, who together signed a declaration of intent with several targets such as emission-free transports, aiming for Gothenburg to be a raw model for sustainable transportation and business development and as part of the place brand of BRG.In this case, the specific focus on the development of the future transport system is not only a result of present climate visions but is also a result of historical relationships in the municipality.

Experimental governance and urban experimentation
In the following section, the urban experiments are discussed in relation to the ways they are governed and planned for.This enables discussion of their capacity to deal with climate governance and experimentation.The three cases share similarities and differences (see also Table 2).One of the main characteristics of experimental governance and urban experimentation is the increasing involvement of a variety of actors in the planning process (Bulkeley and Castan Broto 2013;Agger and Sørensen 2016), which can be related to notions of networked and collaborative governance processes to solve complex challenges.In all cases the focus on collaborations between a variety of actors is present.However, all initiatives are top-down initiated and hence spatially and socially selective processes (Rosol, Béal, and Mössner 2017).Scholl and de Kraker (2021a) showed that the involvement of actors and the leading actors have a bearing on how the experimental process is structured.In Mariestad and Umeå the public administration (i.e.internal departments of the municipalities) initiated and are responsible for the urban experiments.In the case of Gothenburg, BRG is a public utility that is owned by the municipality.It also serves as the local industry office for the municipality but is not directly linked to the municipal administration.Their task is to support business development within the city of Gothenburg, but also in the 13 surrounding municipalities in the larger city region of Gothenburg.In that sense, it is natural that BRG works closely with firms and industry and research institutions in their development of the Gothenburg Green City zone.However, and in a similar way, it was also the local industry office in Mariestad that initially worked with Electrivillage.The difference is that Electrivillage has been incorporated into other departments of the municipality working with sustainability matters, such as the planning department, mainly as part of the development of the climate contract.However, this shows that the development of new arenas of urban experimentation challenges more traditional policy and planning processes in several ways.In Electrivillage and Gothenburg Green City Zone, urban experimentation has been placed in other departments than the local planning offices, even though the experiments have effects on urban infrastructure and urban planning processes (Roebke, Grillitsch, and Coenen 2022).The experiments also take place in urban areas in the cities and thus have spatial impacts and often consist of a specific neighbourhood (see e.g.Fastenrath et al. 2023).
Even though the research literature in practice highlights the importance of co-creation and collaboration including civil society actors in urban experimentation (e.g.Fuenfschilling, Frantzeskaki, and Coenen 2019), it is only in the case of U-bike that the experiment directly involves citizens as users to test and use the cargo bikes.In Gothenburg Green City Zone, the next step is to increase citizen involvement, but so far collaborations have been limited to working with industry and to some extent with research institutes and universities.In Electrivillage the development of the demonstration arena did not include the involvement of citizens from the start, mainly as the development of hydrogen cars has been limited, and therefore the use of the station was mainly limited to firms and industries.However, as previously mentioned the focus on hydrogen gas as part of building the brand of Electrivillage has led to other initiatives in the municipality with a larger focus on citizens as users of the produced gas.However, in no case are the citizens part of the actual initiation of the urban experiments, which can lead to a lack of legitimacy in governance processes (Eneqvist et al. 2022).There is also the tendency of methodological lock-ins focusing on the method implementation and its outputs such as devices or products and as in many other cases not so much on the actual societal challenge (Bylund, Riegler, and Wrangsten 2022).The three examples show that the scale of urban experimentation varies, both in relation to the size of the cities, but also within the cities.In both Umeå and Mariestad, the experiments have to some extent been limited to specific sectors, such as cargo-bikes and hydrogen gas.In Mariestad, this is mainly a result of the success of the hydrogen station.In Gothenburg, the experiments are also limited to sectors, although there is an openness to what kind of experiments will take place there.Importantly, and despite that the experiments are covering larger areas of the city, they are still limited to specific geographical areas in the municipalities.In Mariestad and Gothenburg, the municipalities are run as test beds or demonstration arenas for many different experiments, whereas the case of U-bike is in contrast one example of an experiment that could be part of a demonstration arena.
Similarly, in all three municipalities public space is used as real-world 'laboratories' with an expectation to deliver new solutions that can be either up or downscaled and transferred within the city or elsewhere.Although Mariestad is a small municipality the initiative of Electrivillage was set up as part of a larger demonstration arena.The scale of urban experimentation in the city is equal to the whole municipality but with different small-scale test beds and demonstration arenas.One of the strengths was described as 'The possibilities to test in a smaller city without closing of streets' (project leader, Mariestad).Today the fuel cell station is not up and running but must be moved to a new location.However, its success as a showcase to the rest of the world has meant that the municipality is now promoting the use of hydrogen gas in other sectors in the city.Hence, Electrivillage has been closely related to the production of hydrogen as an energy source, both in relation to fuel cell cars, but also for energy production.In Gothenburg, the testbeds are located in three geographical areas.One of the main ideas behind the initiative is that by using different kinds of geographical areas in the city as test beds, these different zones can be seen as examples of best practice with their own characteristics.The aim is to be able to replicate or scale up the experiments in other cities or areas with similar characteristics and just in the case of Mariestad, to showcase the local solutions to the rest of the world (Peck and Theodore 2015).
Other aspects that were pointed out in the interviews were the possibility to test and learn from innovation processes in real time (Bulkeley et al. 2016).As in many cases where urban experimentation takes place, the development of Gothenburg Green City Zone was initiated to learn about and to better understand today's urban planning and city development ideals and how to implement transportand mobility services in line with current climate ambitions (Bulkeley et al. 2016).This is also expressed in one of the interviews: Since we have a strong transportation cluster in Gothenburg, which doesn't only include Volvo companies anymore, we have seen that we must work together with the cluster, as this is a sector that must succeed in this transformation and then we are trying to involve them in the transformation of the city in one way or another.Then the city can make use of the research and knowledge that already exists within the automotive industry.One challenge is of course that we cannot just take their products and use them, it must go through procurement, but as long as we are innovating, then we can be more local patriotic.(Project leader, BRG) From the beginning U-bike was developed as a pilot project stretching over three years, ending in 2020.As it turned out to be successful, the municipality now runs it on a yearly basis.There are no plans to open more garages or set up new locations for cargo bikes, but so far, the municipality has decided to continue offering the service.Part of this is that the municipality does not see themselves as a future provider of U-bike as a service, but as an enabler for the citizens to try and use new mobility services that could lead to more sustainable choices in terms of transport.The project was an early front-runner in relation to the municipal offer to use/rent e-cargo-bikes for a cheap price.As one of the main goals of the municipality is to offer all citizens the possibility to test the bikes it has been important to keep the fees down, which means that the service as such is not profitable.Even though the municipality wished for a market-based actor to take over the service, it has been difficult to attract service providers to the city.However, the work with attracting service providers puts demands on municipalities to act outside their ordinary role as serving the public good to develop new business models that can attract businesses and firms to provide more sustainable solutions.The question remains whether such responsibility should be placed on public or market actors (Eneqvist and Karvonen 2021).However, some housing companies have picked up the idea and will set up their own hub for cargo-bikes for the residents.As Umeå, was a frontrunner with U-bike, the project has also been part of externally funded projects which has made it possible to add both economic and knowledge resources to support its development.
This points to both learning as an inherent part of experimentation, but also in terms of transferability to other places.As the scaling up of the experiments also involves market actors, this on the other hand also shows that experimentation is also driven by more growth-oriented and narrow perspectives of best practices where experiments can be transferred from one place to another (Rosol, Béal, and Mössner 2017).
On a more overall level, all interviewees express that there are some general problems with how the current development of urban experimentation is going and if they are really making a difference as they are often part of short-term projects and that they lack implementation.This can also be argued to be part of what Fred et al. (2018) see as a shift in the municipal organization towards 'projectification' driven by a competition of project funding making it possible for municipalities to design and test sustainable solutions.As with experimentation, projects are often used as a means for local development, or to deal with complex problems that cannot be solved within ordinary work of the municipality.This is in line with Evans et al. (2021) showing that so far urban experimentation has not been able to drive a broader transformation of cities. Often there is a lack of knowledge transfer and no concern for previous results from similar efforts in other places.Similarly, Bylund, Riegler, and Wrangsten (2022), showed that when experiments are happening in parallel to the ordinary municipal work, and not as an integrated part of urban planning, this tends to limit the long-term impact of such projects, and thus also the challenges the projects are expected to deal with.Thus, the translation of both successful and failed innovation projects is often lost as there is no or very little time for reflection after a project ends.
Although this is a major concern in the municipalities, all three have to some extent found ways to continue to develop new experiments based on former experiences and to transfer knowledge between people and into new related projects.The officials in all municipalities also highlight that despite a large share of the municipal innovative work is happening as part of externally financed projects, this is also where they have the possibility to test new innovations and to experiment outside of the more rigid structures in the municipality.

Concluding discussion
As in the three cases presented here, almost all European cities and municipalities are working with sustainability visions and climate goals to reach climate neutrality in the coming years.In all three municipalities, the municipal climate goals have worked as a guiding tool for the local officials in their work with the development of the respective urban experiments.The visions have served as a function to describe the work of the authority externally, to the general public or to the political sphere, but especially to formulate the goals of the internal work in the municipality (Waaranperä 2013) and to reach the municipal climate goals.However, this work has also been part of building an innovative city brand of the municipalities as forerunners in sustainability matters with innovative environments where firms and industries can test services and new products to deal with societal challenges.This is, however, a challenge where urban experiments become part of ways to symbolically signal innovativeness and brand cities instead of supporting real societal transformation (Bylund, Riegler, and Wrangsten 2022).Another challenge is knowledge creation and knowledge transfer between actors.Part of this is the fact that urban experimentation is frequently run through externally financed projects where knowledge might get lost when the project ends.
All experiments have been initiated by the municipalities playing an important role as facilitators for experimentation in their cities.This has allowed city officials to work outside more rigid municipal structures and to test new solutions and technologies in a real-world setting.In Mariestad and Gothenburg, one important component of experimentation was for industry actors to try out new solutions, which points to a tighter relationship between local industry offices, firms and industries and city planning (see also Algehed et al. 2019b).It was only in the case of Umeå that the experiment directly involved citizens, which is striking as one of the main pillars for urban experimentation is collaboration and co-creation activities that include a wide range of actors.In all cases, the citizens are rather seen as users than as actual participants of co-creation processes.Thus, in line with (Eneqvist et al. 2022) urban experimentation raises questions about the role of municipalities as servants of the public good, or as facilitators for new market development and new innovations and technologies.An important part of urban experimentation in all the municipalities has been the use of public space, which can risk leading to new power relations and unclear responsibility in planning processes.On the other hand, the municipalities point to the importance of speeding up transformation processes where the municipal structures are often too rigid to make such a change.Hence, there is a dualism in new governance structures such as experimental governance.On the one hand, officials use urban experimentation as a planning tool to work towards more sustainable transport systems.On the other hand, experimental governance challenges current planning processes in terms of nested and networked forms of governance.Even though urban experimentation champions co-creation, citizens are seldom part of the initial stages of such processes.Bylund, Riegler, and Wrangsten (2022) argue that to overcome such problems, there is a need for methods that work on a

Table 1 .
List of interviews and documents analysed.
governance are emerging in line with experimental governance and urban experiments.

Table 2 .
Overview of driving actors, motives, involvement, place branding activities and scale of experimentation.As such, the processes of urban experimentation discussed here, are very different in character.