Author: Gregor Cerinšek & Vaike Fors / Halmstad University
As cities experiment with new forms of sustainable mobility and urban logistics, the concept of the Living Lab (LL) has become an increasingly central model in EU innovation policy. The GREEN-LOG project embraces this by co-designing and piloting last-mile delivery ecosystems across several European cities – including Oxfordshire, Mechelen, Ghent, Leuven, Barcelona, Athens, and Ispra – with the aim of making urban logistics more economically viable, environmentally sustainable, and socially inclusive.
But amidst the pilot projects, parcel lockers, and electric cargo bikes, a fundamental question lingers: Are we missing something? The answer lies not only in what we assess, but how we assess it.
The challenge: Moving beyond surface-level metrics
Urban environments are complex, dynamic, and socially diverse. The logistics innovations introduced through GREEN-LOG do not just tweak systems. They reshape daily routines, spaces, relationships, and perceptions. While many EU projects use quantitative methods and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to assess carbon savings or modal shift percentages, these often miss the human story unfolding beneath the surface. As highlighted during a recent Working Group session among the three sister projects on green urban logistics—URBANE, DECARBOMILE, and GREEN-LOG—the inherently messy, iterative, and multi-stakeholder nature of living labs means that social impacts often emerge in ways that are unplanned, intangible, subjective, and deeply context-dependent.
GREEN-LOG quickly realised that understanding the lived experiences of couriers, shop owners, local governments, and residents requires more than surveys or dashboards. It demands deep engagement, sensitivity to context, and the courage to reflect on unintended consequences.
Our response: Design ethnography & Deep dives
To avoid the pitfalls of so-called “lab washing”, where co-creation and stakeholder engagement are included more for optics than for meaningful inclusion, GREEN-LOG also integrates design ethnographic methods as assessment and engagement tools. This includes field visits to observe everyday delivery practices in real-life settings; open-ended interviews together with sensory walks and bike rides with living lab stakeholders, and participant observations with co-creative film-making (as already presented in one of our previous blogs).
These immersive activities – what we refer to as ethnographic deep dives – are not just methods of observation; they are acts of engagement that help us surface the nuances, contradictions, and intangible impacts of urban transformations.
Gregor and Loesje during a sensory bike ride through the streets of Ghent, exploring everyday logistics from an embodied, user-centered perspective
The next frontier: Deep scaling
While many innovation projects aim to scale out (replicate) or scale up (influence policy), these modes often fall short in capturing how real, lasting change takes root in communities. What we need instead is deep scaling to embed the innovations into local cultures, values, and routines, transforming not just what people do, but how they think, feel, and relate to others.
In GREEN-LOG, we pursue deep scaling through an iterative process structured around three interconnected phases. In the “Scoping phase,” we co-created a shared vision with local stakeholders, forming “protagonist communities” who actively shape the innovation process. The “Developing phase” focuses on iterative prototyping and contextual adaptation, ensuring that emerging solutions are grounded in everyday practices and local values. Finally, the “Think forward phase” shifts attention from replication to long-term transformation, using strategic reflection and institutional anchoring to embed innovations into governance structures, community routines, and cultural norms – so their impact can extend beyond the project lifecycle.
Final reflection: What are we learning?
What the GREEN-LOG project is discovering through deep dives and deep scaling is that social impact is not a straightforward number. It is not (only) the delta between baseline and final surveys. It is more of a journey – messy, iterative, emotional, even political.
Living labs, at their best, are arenas of transformation. But only if we are brave enough to step into the discomfort of complexity, to sit in the awkwardness of uncertainty, and truly listen to the stories and signals that conventional quantitative assessments often fail to capture.
Yes, we might still be missing something. But by embracing qualitative thick data and jointly co-creating futures grounded in real places and lived experiences, we are getting closer to what truly matters – and to the kind of transformation that can last beyond the formal project closure.
Acknowledgement: This blog post is based on insights from the paper “Beyond Lab Washing: A Methodology for Social Impact Assessment in Living Labs” presented at the Open Living Lab Days 2025, co-authored by Gregor Cerinšek, Vaike Fors, and Melania Mihalcea as part of the Horizon Europe GREEN-LOG project.
The title image refers to observing and video-documenting real-life courier delivery in action in the city of Oxford, capturing the everyday challenges and on-the-ground adaptations of last-mile logistics.