Risk and approaches to risk-taking in testbed planning

Urban experimentation and testbed planning have emerged as a response for developing solutions to contemporary urban challenges and constitute designated spaces of risk-taking. They represent strategic attempts at reimagining, influencing and even altering urban futures through the specific focus of being open to surprises and the unexpected. The aim of this article is to conceptualize risk in testbed planning and analyze risk and urban planning approaches to risk-taking. By using mobility experiments in five Nordic municipalities, it is shown that three approaches to risk prevail with regard to different loci of risk in testbed planning. These three approaches are minimizing and shifting responsibilities for individual risk, minimizing and shifting organizational risks and refusing political risks.