This is a CTP of initiative: Living Labs - Living Lab Eindhoven (Netherlands)
This critical turning point (CTP2) elaborates on the process of acquiring and using the subsidy that was granted by the Provincial Government of Brabant for the project living lab Stratumseind 2.0. It also highlights the consequences that this subsidy had since it kick-started the development of the project living lab Stratumseind 2.0. This project has been successful, however, there are also challenges with respect to its long-term continuation.
Stratumseind 2.0 has been developed in the street Stratumseind. Stratumseind is a prominent street in the nightlife of Eindhoven since it is full of pubs. There are a variety of challenges in this street. In Stratumseind 2.0 the project team mainly does two things: 1) it intervenes in the street in a certain, often rather ‘soft’ way (e.g. it is changing the colours and intensity of light, it experiments with scent, it changes the design of the terraces, etc.) and 2) it collects data via sensors concerning the behaviour of the users of the streets. The project team then brings those two things together to learn how the liveability in the street can be improved, but also to draw more general lessons of how data can be used to improve the liveability in cities.
The subsidy was a critical turning point for the success of the living lab project. The project had a total budget of 700.000 Euro and with the subsidy the province made 450.000 Euros available in cash, which meant that the project could use those 450.000 Euros for ‘doing things’ in the project. Acquiring a fund within the municipality of Eindhoven of this size for such a project would have been virtually impossible. It would have taken years of preparation. The funding gave the project a lot of freedom and room for experimentation.
The application for the subsidy was developed with a broad range of stakeholders (see co-production). Together they defined a problem that needed to be dealt with. The municipality and the police were worried that the number of non-utilized, empty buildings in Stratumseind increased. Empty buildings are not good for the street and associated with economic, social and security challenges. Additionally there was a general perception that the use of the street was too limited. The street is used mainly on Saturday and Friday evening, the other moments it is hardly used and the majority of visitors are people that are only passing the street on their way to another place. Residents appreciate some moments of quietness in their streets, but the representatives of the residents also agreed that the street could and should be more vivid during other moments as well. The owners of the pub also experienced an urgency to do something since their businesses were not doing very well. Eventually Stratumseind is perceived to be a street with a high number of aggression related incidences. All together this meant that the project started with a general agreement that ‘something should happen’. So the idea was born to start with (some quick) interventions such as bringing in more green (flowers) in the street to make it more friendly and the experimentation with lighting. This approach was complemented with making a long-term vision of what the image of the street should be(come).
The idea of Stratumseind 2.0 is related to the values of the city of Eindhoven. Those values are ‘TDK’: Technology, Design and Knowledge (in Dutch: Techniek, Design and Kennis) and they are intended to characterize, but also further develop and ‘brand’ Eindhoven. It has ambitions to make the street more attractive and more vivid outside the night-life hours by including for example coffee bars which offer specialized products. The type of businesses that it wants to attract should characterize the TDK genes of the city as much as possible, by being creative businesses that care about the products that they offer.
Tinus is convinced that the subsidy was granted to their initiative because they had a new and innovative way of organising themselves. They set-up a quadruple helix structure in which government, entrepreneurs (private sector), knowledge, research and education institutions and citizens cooperate.
This critical turning point is co-produced by a variety of actors that all represent different ‘sectors’ in society. The starting phase was internal within the municipality:
Tinus Kanters and Vera Gienen were both civil servants at the municipality of Eindhoven. When Tinus had time to work on something new and he had ideas in the direction of the current Stratumseind 2.0 project (see related events). He discussed his ideas with Vera who was then focusing on policy around cycling in Eindhoven. Like Tinus, she was interested in the effect of light on the experience and behaviour of people using Stratumseind and she was interested in evidence of certain (cor)relations among the use of light and the experience and behaviour of users. Tinus wanted to start collecting evidence that helps us to understand human behaviour better and that makes certain patterns visible. Tinus illustrated his and Vera’s line of thinking by reflecting on interventions and policy making: “(..) everybody always does all kind of things, but where is the evidence?” Tinus had a large network due to his long history in the organization of events and he managed to put up cameras in the street (for collecting data about behaviour) among others and this allowed to get a light version of the Stratumseind living lab off the ground fairly quick. He then also got a very small sum of money that Vera could mobilize and that helped him to get started. It got clear that the ideas of Tinus fitted in the ambitions of the municipality that were laid down in the roadmap lighting and Smart City of 2012 (den Ouden & Valkenburg, 2012).
After this initial start Tinus realized that he needed to aim for more and he started to engage a variety of actors:
Tinus brought all the actors together in an early stage and when Marcel Evers found the possibility to apply for subsidy at the Province, they decided to go for it. They invited the manager of the subsidies from the Province of Brabant to show him the Stratumseind project idea and to check if this type of subsidy application would be viable. This helped to give the project more visibility and it helped in terms of network building with the province: it increased the chance of success.
Now the project is running it goes further than collecting and analysing data: it also focuses on creating a vision for the street. In this activity the project cooperates with Eindhoven 365, which is an office doing the marketing for Eindhoven, also engaged for long-term image of Stratumseind. They also designed the new logo for Eindhoven (the 3 stripes that are a link to the E).
Finally the following actors are important in the co-creating the Stratumseind 2.0 living lab project as it is operational now:
So in conclusion, this project is not just innovative in terms of its content. It is also a project that really connects a large variety of actors, from researchers, to pub-owners, to residents, to technology companies and civil servants. As mentioned in the section content, the innovative and new collaboration model between various actors is most likely the reason that the subsidy for this project was granted by the Provincial Government. This was possible because they shared the same problem and cared about the same street.
This critical turning point is preceded by a number of events and it also triggered new ones, it ends with the current situation in which its long-term continuation is still uncertain:
The project developed itself rather smoothly in a sequence of connected events (see related events) and it was co-produced by various different actors that shared the same project goal (see co-production). However, it also included resistance and some strategic positioning to overcome or, even more, avoid contestation.
In the beginning of the process Tinus Kanters did not make much noise about his ideas within the municipality. He did this deliberately. He explained that once he decided to look for funding that there are two types of challenges that you face if you are too loud about it:
Tinus explains his strategic ordering of the process: “and only at the moment that subsidy was granted and was safely parked I formulated a message. This message was put on our internal website: “project Stratumseind is granted 450.000 Euro by the Province’. And then I immediately received all kind of e-mails. But luckily I could say: it is all in the hands of the pub-owners and residents association.”
The strategic choices that were made by Tinus also relate to a more broadly defined challenge: in general, it is challenging to work on innovation within a bureaucracy (which a public institution is, by definition). Or as Tinus’ colleague who shortly joined the conversation expressed it: “innovation and the sluggish bureaucracy are a difficult combination”. The city council and many civil servants have visited the Stratumseind living lab project. Tinus explains that: “At some point it was asked ‘have we ever seen a policy paper about this living lab?’” And in fact, the project never was mentioned in a policy paper that was circulated around the municipal bureaucracy for approval, it just got realized, with mainly the funding from the Province. Civil servants and council members were surprised by this, but also realized that it might have been for the benefit if the city eventually. Since it was probably never realized if it should have been approved. The biggest challenge is that this project, since it is innovative, has no clearly defined end target or product. It is a development instead. And as Tinus mentioned: “(..) that implies that you cannot tender it following the European rules, even if you had to, since we simply do not know what we are asking exactly. You start a test, something. Based on a number of chance or coincidental factors there will, or there will not be somebody who engages in the project and develops something around the influence of scent. There will, or there will not be somebody who engages in the project and develops something around detection of aggression. Or somebody comes with who knows what….”
More recently there are also some challenges related to almost an institutional resistance to change and innovation. At this point the subsidy of the Province has stopped and it is not clear how and / or if the funding will continue. Tinus tried to get commitment for the continuation of the project since months before the ending date was insight. It became clear that it is really a challenge to take decisions in a public institution like the municipality and also to force decisions from others. As Tinus explains: “Because then you come at a point where nobody dares to, or can, or will, or may take a decision. Then you end up in a ping-pong between the one and the other sector or department. And I do not mean this negatively, they are also all bound by their position.”
Paradoxically, there are also challenges with all kind of initiatives that pop-up and do not seem planned. Many actors, within the municipality, including the mayor, make deals and cooperation agreements with external parties that fit within policy the city’s ambitions. Those deals are then ‘transferred’ to projects such as the living lab project in Stratumseind. This can create rather strange situations that actually force a certain ‘strategic cooperation’ in a project in which this is not appropriate for various reasons: e.g. the project works already with competitors or the expertise of the strategic partner is not relevant in the specific project. In light of this, it is important to have personal contacts in the municipality, that helps one to find another easily and it stimulates that all actors communicate regularly.
Finally, the process of applying for subsidy and the joint project also created more mutual respect in ‘classical conflict-inclined relationships’. Within the street there are sometimes conflicting interests, for example between the pub owners and the residents. As Tinus explains: “One wants to make noise and the other one wants it to be quiet. You cannot win in this situation. So you just accept that there is and that there will stay a conflict.” The project created a situation in which the various actors, including the pub owners and residents had to do things together and this had a positive effect on their relationship. This also made it easier to deal with conflicts and to settle.
Tinus Kanters put the Stratumseind project in motion. He invested his energy in it. He also understood that it would only work if he had enough commitment of the main stakeholders (see co-production) and if he would have a base of funding that was strong enough to get the process started. But, he did not expect that the project would be as successful as it has become eventually and particularly he did not think about it as something that would be so attractive to people outside Stratumseind. Tinus explained: “When we started I had no idea that we would be where we are now and that we would have visits from another city or group of people every week. No. We have put it in motion for Stratumseind to actually be able to see and monitor the development of Stratumseind. It all went pretty fast into the direction of: Hey, this is really just smart city-like, because it's about the city-centre, it's about privacy issues, it's about data storage, data transfer, security, open data, so it gets really, this is an experiment where we as the municipality of Eindhoven are just trying out smart city things. (..) That was not planned in advance. It was really developed just for the Stratumseind, initially.”
Tinus did anticipate on how this project had to be managed. He explained that it could not be planned actually and that the decision not to plan the process in detail helped the project considerably: “Then you get to things like organic growth and cross-fertilization, which are the words that go with this type of process. And I believe in organic growth in many ways. If I even would be a manager [N.B. Tinus Kanters is project leader of Stratumseind], I would put on the board: Organic growth. Let things happen, because if you start fencing off, you'll lose much of the creativity and the ‘out of the box’, so open it up. And cross-fertilization; when you think out of the box and look just a little bit further (…) and if you combine this with an organic-growth and design perspective you will see that, by simply asking two questions, things that seem to have nothing to do with each other do have linkages. (..) And I think it works that way. Events and actually all the nice things in life arise by chance, because people apparently have good ideas at the right time. There are many people who have good ideas that do not flourish, then the time is probably not right. (..) But you cannot plan it all. You can for example not say that now there will suddenly be a very nice atmosphere on Stratumseind ??that arises, it emerges. Also you cannot write down: In five years, we will have a smart city, we list all the ingredients and we make the itinerary by which it happens, it does not work like that.”
Tinus also anticipated on the opportunity he saw. He realised that he could make the project work, but in order to realise this he also knew that he had to carefully balance his time, energy and commitment. He did this semi-automatically since he has actually internalised a way of working in which he (often unconsciously) asks himself what he should give attention and what he should deliberately not give attention. He realised and learned, among others through intensive Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) training that, in order to have real contact and work together on something, it is important to ‘level’ with the people that you communicate with. If you are far away from each other it costs more energy to level with each other. Tinus also knows that he thinks and talks differently than many other civil servants. So he can choose to either put energy in levelling with them, or he can leave it. He explained it as follows: “(..) I talk different than a number of other civil servants. I know that. I also know a couple of colleagues where I can try what I want, but I know it [our communication] won’t work. Would I then put my energy in it? I then just make up the balance. I make an evaluation: I have so much energy and how do I want to use it? I just move on with my plans and I know that there are many colleagues that I can easily get committed at the moment that I can show a concrete outcome of my work. So engaging them at a later stage only saves me a lot of work. I do not need to have all of them on board, for everything, all the way. But I do show the results and I never have a problem with this way of working.”
The living lab project in Stratumseind is a project that is part of a larger living lab ‘movement’ in Eindhoven. The living lab is on its turn part of the emergence of the Smart City in Eindhoven. In order to understand how this CTP has contributed to this larger living lab and Smart City movement and what we can learn from it, it is relevant to understand a bit more about what Smart City actually is. Smart City is quickly associated with Big Data and technology. Tinus Kanters explains that the Smart City concept does include technology indeed, but then it actually goes a step further. He says that it is mostly about how this technology is used, since a smart city aims at giving people in the city a better life, making them capable to influence their living environment more directly.
One of the main lessons for working along the line of the Smart City is the need to have an experimental project design. The project in Stratumseind is designed to improve the quality of the street for its users. What such an improved quality actually is and how it can be achieved is different for everybody and that is why it has been so important to make the project experimental and to engage a variety of actors that have a stake in the development of Stratumseind.
Related to this experimental project design there are a few lessons that can be drawn:
References
prof.dr.ir. Elke den Ouden & dr.ir. Rianne Valkenburg (2012), Visie en roadmap stedelijke verlichting Eindhoven 2030; Onderzoeksrapportage - juli 2012. This is the ‘Road Map Lighting in Eindhoven’; accessed at 22 July 2016 http://www.tue-lighthouse.nl/Images/Licht2030/RoadmapEhv2030NL.pdf
SmartCitiesCouncil.Com (2016), accessed on 26th of July 2016: http://smartcitiescouncil.com/smart-cities-information-center/definitions-and-overviews
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