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Reconfiguring living labs: urban experimentation and developmental governance in Korea’s smart city context
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DOI：10.1080/12265934.2026.2701264.png)
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Abstract
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The living lab concept has circulated globally as a promising approach to citizen-centred smart city governance and urban experimentation, yet how living labs are reconfigured when implemented within governance contexts shaped by developmental state legacies remains underexamined. Drawing on interviews and policy document analysis, this paper examines the case of Magok Living Lab (MLL), a government-led project launched within the Magok M-Valley smart city district in Seoul. Situated within South Korea’s developmental governance context, where smart city policy is closely tied to economic growth and industrial competitiveness, MLL was positioned primarily as a bounded technology test-bed supporting local economic development. The findings reveal that its experimental qualities were systematically constrained by short project cycles, performance-oriented evaluation, and limited citizen agency. MLL thus functioned not as an open-ended experimental platform but as a managed development policy instrument, with participatory rhetoric serving to legitimise economic development objectives. The paper conceptualises this outcome as a process of selective adaptation, illustrating how the globally circulating living lab model becomes structurally reconfigured through the institutional logic of developmental governance.
Keywords:
Living labs
urban experimentation
developmental governance
policy mobility
smart cities
Korea
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