Experimenting with streets for system change in urban mobility

Amidst efforts to increase sustainability and liveability in urban areas, city street experiments are becoming an increasingly popular tool to explore potential future scenarios for urban streetscapes. Despite their increased implementation however, little is known about how street experiments can contribute to transitions. While they are often lauded for their immediate benefits that seem to relate to larger challenges (like a decrease in car traffic, increased feelings of well-being and physical activity), these benefits have yet to be understood in the context of wider system change. This dissertation fills this knowledge gap by developing an anaytical framework for the transitional capacity of experiments, identifying barriers and enablers to this process, and zooming in on two important elements: how formal institutions influence the transitional capacity of experiments and how learning happens during experiments. The results of this thesis characterize street experiments as ‘hopeful monstrosities’: cumbersome and resource-intensive yet promising in terms of their potential reward. While the numerous barriers identified in this research echo the notion of vulnerable experiments ‘fighting’ established regimes, the results also reveal that street experiments possess a great deal of agency not previously acknowledged in the literature.