Three things really stood out for me when I first came to Paris. The first was the attention to detail and I think this comes from the fact that Parisians are proud of their city, their history, their creativity and their community. When I first went to the florist and they spent so much time and effort in wrapping up my flowers (compared to what I was used to) or most notably was a little old lady outside her apartment building polishing the bronze door handle for the entire building - something which you would never see in Sydney. Parisians take pride in what they do and are creative in their presentation, of themselves as well as their belongings. The second thing that struck me was the shape of the actual city. The complete opposite of what I was used to in Sydney with its harbour, beaches and hills, Paris is small and flat and divided into perfect little neighbourhoods or what you like to call ‘arrondissements’ which have unique characteristics. This is perhaps one of the reasons why the Velib system of bikes seems to work so well in Paris. Lastly, and perhaps this should have come first because it was the very first thing I noticed and in fact the very first thing I think everyone feels when they come to Paris for the first time is a sense of time. The feeling of history comes from the architecture, the art, the museums…and what makes this feeling so special and so charming is that the present moment in this city is not separate from the past but very much connected to it. Time in Paris continues not in a circle but more like a spiral – never overlapping but always continuing and connecting without loosing momentum. There are modern art museums like the Pompidou, fashion designers like Christian Lacroix who are inspired by historical costume or new dance styles like tecktonik and all these ‘new’ things sit comfortably next to everything that is old in the city.
A few weeks ago, I attended the conference called Paris-Helsinki Cities as Living Laboratories. Historically Paris has been at the centre of various changes and it seems relevant to draw a historical comparison between what we are seeing in the city and world today and the era of industrialisation. A perfect illustration of this is in the ‘Galerie des Panoramas’ on rue Montmartre, which is reminiscent of a time when a different kind of transformation within the city was taking place due to industrial capitalism and an expanding mass culture. Walter Benjamin focused on this space in his collection of notes entitled ‘Arcades’ in which he explores the social conditions from which this architecture evolved. The arcades of the nineteenth century sheltered the first modern consumerism. In their time, these sorts of arcades were strange new environments, a dialectic between inside and outside, where you entered different shops but were still essentially within the same ‘building’, a place frequented by ‘flâneurs’ – individuals moving through the crowds of Paris, observers not participants, symptomatic of a new culture. For the after party of the Paris-Helsinki Cities as Living Laboratories conference the event was held in the arcade ‘Galerie des Panoramas’ at La Cantine, which is a co-working space within this arcade.
La Cantine a new kind of innovative architectural space which is creating a different type of social experience, a collaborative work environment and which like the arcades of the nineteenth century is frequented by a new type of person. The location of La Cantine within an arcade is perfectly illustrative of the Parisian spiral of time and innovative change. Paris is undergoing transformations today and La Cantine and the new architecture of co-working is illustrative of this. During the Paris-Helsinki conference, Mr Veli-Pekka Niitamo drew another historical parallel between what is happening today and what happened during the renaissance. He said that while Europe may be at the dawn of another renaissance, this new renaissance will be in reverse of the last in that it won’t come from an advance in technology as with the development of the printing press and the revolution for communication. Rather, the change coming with the dawn of cities as Living Laboratories will be based around developments in social mores and practices, which will in turn bring about the development of new technologies as well as new knowledge transfer, communication and innovation.
So what exactly are Living Laboratories and why will they be so historically significant?
- The ‘what’ of living labs goes something like ‘Living Laboratories are the most efficient and innovative way to integrate, create and apply new knowledge’.
- The ‘when’ is very clearly right now! – Helsinki is leading the way in Europe in terms of ‘Cities as Living Laboratories’ and European cities like Paris can learn a lot from what is happening there at the moment.
- …and that brings us to the question of ‘how’, which is much more complicated and certainly the most interesting aspect of this subject.
In the current global context, issues such as the environment and welfare are becoming increasingly important as are cities themselves. If Europe is to compete with Asia in the coming years then there needs to be a greater focus on developing the wealth created by knowledge capital or in other words, increasing networking and socially distributing intelligence. It is important to have information flowing more easily and to prevent the concept of ‘gate-keeping’ whereby the idea for a new innovation or technology is quashed by those in power such as ‘experts’. In a living laboratory situation, ideas are tested directly on the market and the ‘gate-keeper’ is bypassed. An example of this is happening in Paris in the Quartier Numerique (or the second arrondissement in the city) where there is a living lab currently operating and new technologies are being developed and tested.
The infrastructure of Paris is ideal for developing living laboratories for precisely the reasons that I mentioned at the beginning of this post. The physical and social division of the city into arrondissements each with its own unique sense of identity and community, the creativity of the city, the history of adaptability to innovation and change all contribute to this perfect environment. This is one of the reasons that Helsinki is turning towards Paris for a living lab partnership – hence the subject of the conference. One of the most essential aspects of living laboratories within the European community is developing partnerships and expanding The European Network of Living Laboratories (ENOLL). Cross-border innovation is essential if Europe is to compete with the Asian market. Solutions can be tested in living labs within cities in Europe and then exported to Asia. Communication about technologies and innovations within ENOLL is important because some of the smaller countries won’t have the capital to support investment into new technologies and therefore the market opens up when the living labs are communicating and ideally it will incorporate the majority of cities in Europe.
Autumn this year will be the French Presidency Term in Europe so it is relevant to start speaking about cities as Living Laboratories here in France and show France at the centre of change as it was in the industrial revolution. As Walter Benjamin observes, the old is always inherent in the new, it is a return, a spiral… While the arcades of the industrial era were once ‘the innermost glowing cells of the city of light’, perhaps now these innermost glowing cells will become co-working communities like La Cantine and many of the new nomadic co-workers will find their oasis in the very same arcade that the flâneurs of the 19th century once frequented.
