Advancing Sustainable Urban Transformation through Living Labs: Looking to the Öresund Region

The Öresund Region is a unique area where academia institutions, local governments, regional authorities, and clean-tech businesses are actively working towards sustainable urban transformation with the aim to be a regional ”powerhouse” for sustainability, innovation and clean-tech (City of Copenhagen, 2009; City of Malmö, 2009). This encompasses working with adaptation and mitigation, and enhancing resilience, in response to climate change and sustainability challenges. The purpose of this paper is to present the Urban Transition Öresund project (2011-2014) in the context of (local) transition governance, to provide insights into Living Labs in Europe that are working with sustainability, innovation and clean-tech, and to discuss how (and if) the concept of Living Labs can help to advance sustainable urban transformation in the Öresund Region and beyond. This paper represents a discussion of ideas rather than concrete findings. However, the Öresund Region is particularly interesting because it provides a ”laboratory” by which to experiment, implement, examine and evaluate the progress of (local) transition governance and infrastructural investments.