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91��ܽ the Urban Innovation Lab: Urban Solutions Through Collaborative Innovation

The Urban Innovation Lab (UIL) 2023-2025 was a pilot initiative between the City of New Westminster and 91��ܽ designed to bridge municipal innovation and student learning in a range of dimensions of urban public management. This collaboration aims to bring students and staff together in new ways to crack open new solution prospects for complex urban challenges.

An Urban Innovation Lab Journey 

Our Vision and Purpose

UIL’s core purpose is to foster innovation and address complex urban challenges through collaborative, experiential learning. This partnership is a testament to the belief that partnerships between the academy and profession can work – and work mutually. Grounded in curiosity and a shared civic purpose, the vision of the UIL is to cultivate city-university collaboration in the long term.

Objectives for City Of New Westminster Staff

• Employ problem-solving and capacity building to improve urban management functions and work, addressing specific objectives designed for across various disciplinary competencies.

• Find a safe and neutral space for innovation, allowing for creative reflection and exploration of new ideas.

• Seize the opportunity to strengthen internal innovation culture and contribute to the city’s strategic objectives, moving beyond fixing recognized deficiencies to actively shaping and creating more resilient approaches and systems.

• Gain valuable professional development and see results through their own and student learning and work products.

• Engage in inquiry and time to investigate new perspectives on existing projects and initiatives, drawing on academic research, dialogue, and time in the urban classroom

• Focus on enhancing organizational capacity for innovation, both internal to the City and in the municipal innovation ecosystem at large. 

Objectives for 91��ܽ Students

• View the lab as an experiential learning opportunity for both graduate and undergraduate students across all disciplines, offering unique perspectives and insights into the effective functioning of a complex urban municipal organization.

• Engage in “learning-by-doing,” integrating different innovation approaches into their projects.

• Cultivate critical problem-solving skills, adaptability to challenging solutions, and the ability to work productively with multiple publics and diverse forms of knowledge.

• Develop dynamic capabilities through a process of investment, discovery, and experimentation that is integral to mission-oriented initiatives.

• Practice critical reflexivity about one’s own identity, perspective, background, and relationships to effective urban management and governance, with a view to fostering more equitable relationships with diverse communities in public and shared space.

• Gain practical, professional experience in problem definition and problem-solving while being introduced to work within a complex municipal organization and its wider innovation ecosystem, and working in interdisciplinary groups with professional and academic guidance.

How We Work: Components and Approach

The UIL has piloted a particular model of urban innovation for public good through a city-classroom experimental model. Combining an academic curriculum in urban innovation, local policy processes, and urban challenges, and challenges and frameworks defined in the context of the City of New Westminster, the UIL breaks through the limitations of classroom learning and bureaucratic organization and forges a new relationship. 

Iterative Process: Investigations in the Lab comprise five iterative parts of 1) Questioning, 2) Observing, 3) Experimenting, 4) Networking, and 5) Association.

Interdisciplinary Teams: Approximately 10-12 students across different disciplines work in groups of 3-4 and are led by CNW staff across departments as “tour guides” who open doors to understanding the City as an organization, as sets of responsibilities and relationships, and as a landscape and innovation ecosystem.

Co-Creation: The focus on co-creation of innovative solutions among team members with diverse perspectives and skills fosters trust, understanding and better quality research and practice. 

Balance of Theory and Practice: The innovation approach involves an iterative process of both “thinking” and “doing.”.

Funds for the Urban Innovation Lab were received from the SFU Urban Studies Initiative in Urban Sustainable Development.