What is Service Co-Design

Urban Living Labs are socio-digital innovation environments in realistic city life conditions based on multi-stakeholder partnerships that effectively involve citizens in the co-creation and co-production of new or reformed public services and infrastructures. This chapter explores the growing phenomenon of Urban Living Labs and analyses the nature of related innovations in the perspective of ‘City Smartness' – a mantra for local governments worldwide which are having to address increasingly complex problems with fast diminishing financial resources. It goes on to briefly overview the urban governance models emerging in such environments and finally focuses on the challenges posed by these models as result of integration between the ‘technology push' Smart City vision and the ‘human pull' Urban Living Lab concept and approach.