Reframing places, communities and identities: social learning in urban experimentation

A central promise of urban experiments (UEs) is to create sites for social learning. However, research on such learning in sustainability transitions still lacks conceptual clarity and empirical evidence. This article helps close this gap by analyzing how emerges from experimentation. It adopts a transactional understanding induced disruptions everyday habits distinguishes cognitive, normative, relational processes. Further, the additional dimension socio-material derived account changes or interpreting material realities. These concepts serve an analytical framework case study two transition carried out as part transdisciplinary project “Dresden – City Future.” The UEs strive initiate local pertaining participatory governance districts co-creation livable schoolyard. results illustrate interventions sense cognitive understandings, norms, relations among people, well between people their environments. encouraged individual collective particular formation identities interpretations specific places. By comparing UEs, we further show differences regarding actor groups, namely that majority processes first experiment dealt with bridging prevalent routines school community novel introduced initiators experiment. Participants second were socio-ecologically minded outset therefore fewer took place regard.