Urban Planning (ISSN: 2183–7635) 2021, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages 161–170 DOI: 10.17645/up.v6i1.3626 Article The Practice of Urban Experimentation in Dutch City Labs Christian Scholl 1, * and Joop de Kraker 1,2 1 Maastricht Sustainability Institute, Maastricht University, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands; E-Mails: christian.scholl@maastrichtuniversity.nl (C.S.), j.dekraker@maastrichtuniversity.nl (J.d.K.) 2 Department of Environmental Sciences, Open Universiteit, 6401 DL Heerlen, The Netherlands * Corresponding author Submitted: 2 September 2020 | Accepted: 7 November 2020 | Published: 26 March 2021 Abstract ‘Urban planning by experiment’ can be seen as an approach that uses experimentation to innovate and improve urban planning instruments, approaches, and outcomes. Nowadays, urban experiments—interventions in the city with the aim to innovate, learn, or gain experience—are increasingly taking place in the context of Urban Living Labs. In the Netherlands, a certain type of Urban Living Lab, called city labs, is flourishing, and it has been suggested that these labs could make an important contribution to ‘urban planning by experiment.’ However, previous studies have indicated that this will depend on how experimentation is conducted in these labs. To obtain a more comprehensive picture of the practice of experimen- tation, we conducted a survey among Dutch city labs, supplemented by individual and group interviews with practitioners from a small subset of the 17 responding labs. We conclude that there is a poor match between the practice of exper- imentation in Dutch city labs and the characteristics that are considered to support effective ‘urban planning by experi- ment’ (i.e., a structured approach to experimentation, co-creation of experiments, active and targeted dissemination of lessons learned, and experiments as linking pins between municipal policy goals and the needs of urban society). This sug- gests that the current contribution of Dutch city labs to ‘urban planning by experiment’ is probably quite limited. Further research is needed to determine whether the typical practice of experimentation encountered in the Dutch city labs, i.e., action-oriented, resource-limited, and largely driven by opportunities, is also found in Urban Living Labs elsewhere. Keywords city labs; learning; practice; urban experimentation; urban living labs; urban planning innovation Issue This article is part of the issue “Urban Planning by Experiment” edited by Christian Scholl (Maastricht University, The Netherlands) and Joop de Kraker (Maastricht University, The Netherlands). © 2021 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu- tion 4.0 International License (CC BY). 1. Introduction Urban experimentation is en vogue. Amongst policymak- ers, city officials, urban professionals, and scholars alike there is increasing attention for this concept (Evans, Karvonen, & Raven, 2016). Urban experiments can be seen as purposeful interventions in the city with the aim to innovate, learn, or gain experience (Bulkeley & Castán Broto, 2013). They are distinctive from strictly sci- entific experiments in that they are conducted in real- life settings, are solution-oriented, offer no full control, rely on the mobilization of lay knowledge, and are not easy to replicate (Caprotti & Cowley, 2017). Due to their local scale and limited geographical scope—urban exper- iments usually focus on a small part of the city, e.g., a neighborhood, street, or even just a single building— urban experiments confront place-based dynamics and deliver place-based knowledge and results (Karvonen & van Heur, 2014). Various factors appear to have contributed to the current popularity of urban experimentation, including climate change and the associated attention for urban climate adaptation and carbon–neutral cities (Bulkeley & Castán Broto, 2013), as well as recent ‘urban agen- das’ with experimental implementation approaches, for example by Habitat III (Caprotti et al., 2017; Valencia Urban Planning, 2021, Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages 161–170 161