Abstract
Cities are turning to urban living labs and research consortia to co-create knowledge that can better enable them to address pervasive policy problems. Collaborations within such practices help researchers, officials and local stakeholders find new ways of dealing with urban issues and developing new relations with one another. Interestingly, success in the latter is often closely related to accomplishing the former. Besides of analysing this phenomenon in terms of learning—as is common—this paper also delves into the power dynamics involved in collaborative knowledge development. This perspective contributes to a better understanding of how puzzling and powering are simultaneously involved in making research relevant to policy-making. By presenting two collaborative research consortia in the Netherlands, we demonstrate how developing knowledge involves both re-structuring problems and the urban practices involved in governing such problems. Collaborative research practices are predominantly concerned with learning as long as restructuring the problem leads to research findings that are meaningful to all actors. Power becomes manifest when one actor insists on restructuring (often reproducing) problems in a manner judged unacceptable by others. Analysis of two case studies will show how the familiar three faces of power express themselves in collaborative knowledge development. It is recommended that these new practices also require methods for better orchestrating power besides a methodology for successful structuring learning through collaborative research practices.
Supporting teachers' intervention in collaborative knowledge building
