This chapter focuses on how cities adapt and implement ideas from elsewhere. This is often where idea adoption succeeds or fails. Approaches that worked in one context need to be adjusted to fit local conditions, and that process is rarely straightforward. It often involves iteration, trade-offs, and co-ordination across different actors. The chapter sets out key actions to support this work. These include building and sustaining political leadership, securing the resources needed to deliver, working with target groups to shape how an idea is applied, adapting it to fit local mandates or revisiting governance arrangements when needed and feasible, and testing it before scaling. It also highlights the importance of sharing lessons with others once an idea has been implemented. Together, these actions help cities turn external ideas into workable solutions that fit their local context.
A Toolkit for Adopting Ideas from Other Cities
Abstract
Effective policy transfer requires more than simply replicating a model, it demands reinterpretation, reassembly, and internal negotiations and agreement. “Best” or “good” practices must be “recontextualised”, as institutional structures, cultural norms, and community needs vary across cities. City-to-city adoption is most effective when innovations are adapted to fit local contexts (Baack et al., 2024[1]). For example, the Housing First policy was initially developed in New York City (US) and adapted to suit the context of Helsinki (Finland), reflecting their distinct welfare models.
Over nine out of ten cities that responded to the OECD/Bloomberg Philanthropies survey adapt ideas to their local context. Adaptation implies several operations, from adapting design and scope to match available resources, to changing some features while retaining others to improve compatibility, or blending the idea with existing local initiatives. Co-design with communities and broad engagement are essential to improve fit and legitimacy. Once the idea has been thoroughly adapted, cities implement borrowed ideas by securing strong political support, involving top management, and piloting small-scale projects. They may build on existing local initiatives to accelerate implementation, form coalitions of stakeholders, and set clear, results-oriented goals with effective communication that credits the original city.
According to the OECD/Bloomberg Philanthropies survey, cities primarily rely on the Mayor’s Office and municipal departments to adapt and implement adopted ideas. The Mayor’s Office plays a central role, with 76% of cities reporting that it is always involved and the remaining 24% indicating that it is sometimes involved. Municipal departments, beyond the Mayor’s office, are similarly engaged, with 45% of respondents stating that they are always involved and another 45% reporting occasional involvement. By contrast, strategic teams dedicated to idea adoption tend to play a more occasional role today: 69% of cities reported that such teams are only sometimes involved. External actors, including local community organisations and NGOs, as well as public-private partnerships or external contractors, are also engaged on a more occasional basis. In both cases, the majority of cities reported that these actors are only sometimes involved (76% and 83%, respectively).
Note: N=51 cities.
Source: OECD/Bloomberg Philanthropies Survey.
As noted earlier, the adoption of ideas from other cities is a non-linear process involving continuous adaptation (Enseñado, 2023[2]). Adaptation and implementation are therefore closely linked: implementation challenges related to scope, cost, institutional capacity, or acceptability may require cities to revisit earlier design choices. Anticipating these challenges during the adaptation phase, and adjusting design accordingly, is critical to ensuring that the original idea’s most effective elements are realised in practice.
Research provides numerous examples of how implementation challenges can undermine ideas adopted from elsewhere. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems, widely adopted following Bogotá’s success, illustrate this dynamic. In many cases, disruptions linked to political leadership changes, competition for public space from other transport projects, insufficient funding, limited technical capacity or rushed delivery have resulted in sub-optimal BRT systems (Lindau, Hidalgo and de Almeida Lobo, 2014[3]). Similarly, adopted “Vision Zero” approaches (a road safety strategy based on the principle that no loss of life in traffic is acceptable, prioritising systemic design over individual blame) have delivered limited local impact where they were weakly institutionalised, insufficiently resourced, or not used to drive systemic changes in areas such as road design, speed limits, and vehicle standards (Safarpour et al., 2022[4]; Girma Abebe, 2023[5]).
These findings align with insights from experts and cities consulted for this project, who highlighted constrained budgets, logistical challenges (including organising site visits) and shifting political priorities (especially during electoral cycles) as barriers to adoption. Such constraints underscore the importance of addressing implementation risks early in the process. In this context, networks can provide support, especially for technical assistance and for sustaining institutional knowledge through documentation, peer exchange and ongoing engagement.
Taken together, these insights underline that adapting and implementing ideas from elsewhere is not a linear or purely technical exercise, but a continuous, institutionally embedded process of translation, negotiation, and adjustment. Moving from inspiration to implementation requires cities to work within existing governance arrangements while remaining able to revisit design choices as constraints related to funding, capacity, or political priorities emerge. This process is inherently iterative: implementation challenges frequently reveal mismatches between the original idea and local conditions, requiring further adaptation.
In this context, successful implementation depends on a combination of factors: maintaining political support and administrative ownership; aligning borrowed ideas with local competences and policy frameworks; testing and refining solutions before scaling; engaging stakeholders to ensure legitimacy and usability; and securing adequate financial resources. It also involves contributing back to collective learning by documenting and sharing implementation experience, thereby strengthening future policy transfer processes. The following actions translate these requirements into practical steps to help cities navigate the transition from adaptation to implementation in a structured and pragmatic way.
Cities may use some of these 6 actions to support their adaptation and implementation efforts: Build and sustain political leadership to adapt and implement the borrowed idea; Secure internal and external financial resources for borrowed ideas; Co-design adaptation and implementation with target groups; Adapt borrowed ideas to local mandates and revisit governance when needed; Test and pilot the idea before full-scale roll-out; Give back: disseminate your own good practices.
Build and sustain political leadership to adapt and implement the borrowed idea
Survey findings highlight the central role of political support in adapting ideas and turning them into concrete results. While responsibility for allocating resources to idea adoption projects most often rests either with the head of the relevant department (49%) or directly with the mayor’s office (41%), strong political leadership (from the mayor and other city government officials) stands out as the single most important success factor: 75% of respondent cities ranked it as their top driver of successful adoption.
Successful adoption and implementation of ideas from other cities therefore depends on a dynamic partnership between municipal services and political leadership, as transferring ideas across contexts requires both technical capacities to adapt and operationalise them locally, and political leadership to prioritise, resource and sustain them over time.
In some cases, support flows top down, when mayors or elected officials mandate implementation of a borrowed idea and encourage municipal services to engage with the originator city and adapt it to local challenges, translating it into an operational proposal fit for the adopter city. In other cases, support emerges bottom up, when municipal services identify promising ideas elsewhere and progressively build political buy-in through evidence, piloting, and strategic framing. In practice, many successful cases combine both dynamics, with political leadership and municipal services reinforcing each other over time.
Securing political leadership helps to align the idea adoption project with other local projects, to avoid competition for resources or public space and suboptimal outcomes at the implementation stage (Lindau, Hidalgo and de Almeida Lobo, 2014[3]).
Implementation tip
When implementation is driven primarily by municipal services, staff play a critical role in maintaining political alignment as the initiative evolves. This goes beyond making the initial case for adoption and requires continuously translating implementation progress into politically relevant signals. City experience suggests that political support is rarely secured once and for all. It often needs to be built, maintained, and renewed throughout implementation. This ongoing political stewardship is particularly important for initiatives that require enforcement, behavioural change or co-ordination across institutions, where momentum can weaken without sustained leadership. In practice, this means involving political leadership throughout the implementation phase to keep informed, engaged and committed to steering the initiative. This can involve demonstrating progress through monitoring and evaluation, communicating early results, and maintaining regular engagement through briefings or site visits.
Key questions to consider during implementation include:
How can progress be translated into clear signals that sustain political attention and support?
What trade-offs or adjustments need political input as implementation evolves?
How can the initiative be aligned with shifting political priorities or emerging agendas?
What moments (e.g. early wins, pilots, milestones) can be used to reinforce political commitment?
How can ongoing engagement with elected officials be structured to maintain momentum?
The example of Kampala’s (Uganda) adoption of an idea implemented in Kigali (Rwanda) illustrates that when cities adopt an idea from elsewhere, successful outcomes depend not only on formal adoption or legal feasibility, but critically on how the idea is politically supported over time.
Motorcycle safety is a major issue in Uganda. According to local officials, motorcycle-related accidents account for around 50% of reported road fatalities, with many cases going unreported. A large share of these fatalities is due to head injuries among motorcycle taxi (boda boda) passengers who do not wear helmets.
Seeking to reduce these deaths, Kampala looked to Kigali, where the mandatory use of helmets by both motorcycle drivers and passengers is strictly enforced. In Kigali, boda boda drivers will not depart unless the passenger wears a helmet. This requirement is grounded in national legislation and, through consistent enforcement, has become a widely accepted social norm: wearing a helmet when riding a motorcycle is perceived as normal and expected.
In Kampala, interest in the Kigali model originated within the city’s municipal services rather than at the political level and enforcing helmet use – particularly through fines on motorcycle taxis – remains politically sensitive. As a result, even with a law on mandatory helmet use for passengers in place, the initiative has struggled to gain political traction, limiting its translation into consistent and effective enforcement. Moreover, the city has lacked the resources to fully analyse how Rwanda achieved a lasting cultural shift around helmet use and to build the case for pursuing a similar approach locally. In contrast, in Rwanda the mandatory helmet policy was driven by the national political leadership. This strong and visible political leadership was instrumental in prioritising enforcement, aligning institutions, and normalising compliance – conditions that are currently largely absent in Uganda.
This comparison demonstrates that even where legal frameworks are already in place, strong political leadership is often essential to prioritise enforcement, mobilise institutions, and support the behavioural change required for an externally inspired policy to take root locally.
Source: Interviews with cities.
Secure internal and external financial resources for borrowed ideas
Beyond political leadership, access to dedicated financial resources is a decisive enabler of idea adoption. More than half of the cities surveyed identify the availability of a dedicated budget as one of the most helpful factors in adopting an idea from elsewhere (Figure 2.1). Conversely, financial or resource constraints are by far the most frequently cited barrier to idea adoption, reported by 71% of cities (Figure 4.2).
How likely are the following barriers to complicate or prevent the process of adopting ideas?
Note: N=55.
Source: OECD/Bloomberg Philanthropies Survey.
When securing financial resources, cities benefit from thinking not only about the cost of delivering the idea, but also about the cost of the entire idea adoption process. Indeed, adapting and implementing an idea from elsewhere may entail actions that are not included within regular budgets, such as site visits abroad, pilot studies, partnerships with academics, or studies to support legal or regulatory adjustments. Because internal funding may be limited, support from partners such as city networks, philanthropies, private stakeholders, national innovation funds or supranational bodies may allow cities to cover those activities that are specific to the idea adoption process. Conversely, cities that rely solely on short-term or fragmented funding sources may struggle to move beyond pilot phases. Combining internal budget with external sources can help spread risk, extend time horizons and align incentives across stakeholders.
Implementation tip
To effectively adapt and implement borrowed ideas, cities can take a strategic and structured approach to securing both internal and external financial resources:
Map potential funding sources systematically across the local, national and international levels (e.g. innovation or experimentation funds, programmes of supranational and international organisations, private or philanthropic investment, peer-city or thematic networks);
Assess access conditions early, including eligibility criteria, co-funding requirements, timelines and reporting obligations, and identify whether different funding sources can be combined;
Define a realistic budget envelope that reflects the full costs of the idea adoption process, including adaptation, piloting, evaluation, stakeholder engagement and potential scale-up;
Seek longer-term and more predictable funding streams where possible, to support rigorous evaluation, continuous learning and iterative adaptation over time, and to help move borrowed ideas from project-based experimentation to sustained implementation.
Cities can support the adaptation and implementation of ideas from elsewhere by combining and mobilising diverse funding streams.
Since its creation, La Fábrica in Renca (Chile) has mobilised more than USD 25 million, supporting infrastructure, operations and the implementation of projects inspired by international models. Created and initially funded by the Municipality of Renca, La Fábrica operates as an independent, non-profit entity owned by the municipality. This structure provides a stable core budget through municipal support, while allowing flexibility to attract external resources. Acting as a bridge between local needs and global expertise, La Fábrica works with more than 100 partners – including international organisations, foundations, universities, companies, philanthropists and NGOs – who contribute project-based funding, technical assistance and in-kind resources. In parallel, local businesses and entrepreneurs co-finance initiatives, particularly in areas such as sustainability, the circular economy, youth crime prevention and environmental education. By combining municipal seed funding, external grants, corporate contributions and in-kind support, La Fábrica has created a funding model that enables international ideas to be adapted, financed and implemented locally at scale.
Source: Interviews with cities.
Co-design adaptation and implementation with target groups
Once a city has decided to adopt an idea, stakeholder engagement shifts from assessing relevance to shaping implementation. At this stage, consultation becomes collaborative and design-oriented. The objective is to adapt the imported model so that it effectively meets the needs and preferences of those who will benefit from the resulting policy or programme. Co-design enables cities to refine operational details such as eligibility criteria, service delivery models, sequencing, communication strategies, and risk mitigation, in partnership with those directly affected. Engagement focuses on how an idea that has already been judged relevant to the local context should be implemented to maximise feasibility, legitimacy and long-term impact.
Target group consultation methods collect first-hand, in-depth accounts of lived experiences, helping to ensure that the adapted policy responds as closely as possible to stakeholders’ actual needs and constraints. Applying co-design principles enables municipalities to shift citizens’ role from passive feedback providers to active partners in adaptation and implementation. Such an approach can strengthen ownership of decisions and can reinforce trust in municipal institutions, consistent with the OECD Principles on Urban Policy (OECD, 2024[6]; OECD, 2019[7]).
To successfully co-design how the idea is adapted and implemented locally, local governments can apply in particular Principle 9 “Engaging stakeholders in a co-designed, co-implemented, and co-monitored urban policy”. This principle recommends involving all segments of society, notably the most vulnerable residents and users. It also underlines the importance of promoting outcome-oriented engagement by clarifying the decision making line and how stakeholder inputs will be used, allocating proper resources, sharing information, making it accessible to non-experts and striking a balance between over-represented categories and unheard voices.
Consulting stakeholders at the adaptation stage requires presenting not only the idea itself but also an initial vision of how it could be implemented locally. Half of the cities surveyed reported that they actively manage stakeholder expectations when adapting an idea from elsewhere, highlighting the importance of transparency and clear communication at this stage. Moreover, communicating very clearly the details of an idea, which of its aspects are fixed, which can be changed and how is a core ethical principle of citizen consultation (Schwanen, 2021[8]).
Finally, stakeholder consultation is most valuable when it is not a one-off exercise, but an ongoing and iterative process. However, sustained engagement requires careful design to avoid consultation fatigue, ensure feedback loops on how input is used, avoid over-reliance on already engaged participants, and support citizens’ capacity to contribute. When these conditions are met, re-engaging target groups can enrich evaluation, identify necessary adjustments, and help maximise policy impact over time.
Implementation tip
Depending on their objectives, cities often combine multiple engagement approaches, as illustrated in the examples below:
To understand lived experience and unmet needs, cities may use qualitative interviews, or ethnographic methods. At this stage, engagement helps assess how different groups experience the issue, including whether the adopted idea would meet their needs. One-to-one qualitative interviews are particularly valuable early on, as they can bring to light barriers or sensitivities that may require adjusting the policy’s scope, design, or communication.
To refine or co-design solutions, cities may rely on focus groups, community workshops, design sprints, or participatory pilots. These formats support decisions on how the imported policy should be adapted in practice, including the design of service delivery models, user pathways, or complementary measures. These group consultation methods are particularly well suited to co-design, as they enable stakeholders to deliberate within defined constraints and collectively shape solutions that are locally acceptable and operationally feasible.
To test feasibility and usability, cities may involve service users in prototyping, pilots, or user testing. Engagement at this stage informs implementation choices, such as operational procedures, staffing requirements, or digital and physical interfaces. It allows cities to identify practical bottlenecks, unintended effects, or capacity constraints, and to adjust the adapted model before scaling it up.
To deliberate on complex or contested issues, some cities convene citizen panels or assemblies, often alongside expert input. These formats help inform high-stakes adaptation decisions, such as trade-offs between policy objectives, distributional impacts, or changes to local rules and norms. By including a learning or training phase, they enable residents to engage meaningfully with technical issues and contribute to decisions that would otherwise remain confined to expert or political circles.
Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) adapted a waste management programme originally developed in Accra (Ghana), which it discovered through its engagement with the Bloomberg Cities Idea Exchange and its partner C40. Because the idea emerged through peer exchange rather than a local solution-scouting process, careful adaptation during implementation was particularly important. Dar es Salaam learned from Accra how the programme operated in practice and identified elements that might require adjustment.
During the adaptation phase, the city engaged directly with informal waste collection workers, who would be central to implementation. Community consultation involved more than 100 stakeholders consulted through interviews, workshops and participatory approaches. All stakeholders involved were compensated for their time through transport allowances.
This consultation helped reveal practical constraints that were not immediately visible in the original model. In particular, workers highlighted accessibility challenges in informal settlements, where using motorised tricycles, as in Accra, would be difficult. Based on this input, Dar es Salaam chose to use pushcarts instead, aligning the programme both with local spatial conditions and with broader objectives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This example illustrates how consulting target groups during adaptation can lead to concrete changes in delivery models, improving feasibility, legitimacy, and long-term sustainability.
Source: Interviews with cities.
Adapt borrowed ideas to local mandates and revisit governance when needed
At the “Adapting and Implementing” stage of the idea adoption process, the local authority has already identified any potential incompatibilities between the current governance or legal framework and the idea that needs to be adapted. Addressing these incompatibilities is a priority at this stage, as it will determine whether the idea can be implemented. There are different ways to address these incompatibilities: first, by adapting the idea so that it works with the current context; second, by changing this context so that it offers a more fertile ground for adoption. The latter is very challenging, as advocating for reforms to adopt a specific idea is costly in terms of time and resources, particularly when reforms require other levels of government. Cities often decide to explore other options instead.
Implementation tip
Adapting the idea to the local governance and legal framework may imply substantially changing the idea but retaining the features that ensure impact. Advocating for a change to the existing frameworks is a more uncertain process, and one that is resource‑intensive and may take a long time. This course of action is better suited to structuring, paradigm-shifting projects with strong long-term benefits (Box 4.4).
The following two examples show how cities adapt ideas when local mandates or legal frameworks do not align with those of the originator city, either by creatively working within existing powers or by advocating for legal and institutional change.
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) adapted Helsinki’s ambition of moving to 100% renewable energy by focusing not on changing the energy grid, but on transforming its own energy consumption. Inspired by Helsinki’s decision to shift its electricity system entirely to renewable sources and phase out coal, Rio de Janeiro examined how this objective could be pursued within its own legal and institutional responsibilities. Unlike Helsinki, the City of Rio de Janeiro does not have authority over the energy mix supplied through the grid. As part of its Energy Transition Project, the city therefore reframed the question from how to make the grid renewable to how the municipality itself could consume 100% of its electricity from renewable energy sources. To do so, Rio invested in a large solar farm built on a former landfill site. This solar installation now supplies renewable electricity to 150 schools. Although Rio was not able to directly influence the energy produced by its local utility, Rio was nonetheless able to produce clean energy and use it for its own municipal buildings, illustrating how cities can adapt peer-learning lessons to their own mandates while pursuing similar climate goals.
From another perspective, in Thessaloniki (Greece), the Major Development Agency Thessaloniki (MDAT) created Greece’s first social housing agency by driving national legal reform to make it possible. Learning from elsewhere was at the core of this process: MDAT engaged with Housing Europe, the European network of social housing providers, and established close links with the Ghent (Belgium) social rental agency. Ghent acted as a mentor to MDAT and shared all necessary information for the agency to understand its model and assess the ways it could be transferred. MDAT chose to largely retain Ghent’s business model and institutional set-up, making only minimal adaptations so it could function in the Greek context. However, while preparing the agency’s creation, MDAT and the Municipality of Thessaloniki identified major institutional and legal barriers. At the time, Greek law did not define social housing, nor did it allow local authorities to convert vacant public buildings into social housing. To address these barriers, MDAT drew on more recent reform processes in Poland, a country that had recently introduced social housing agencies. Based on the Polish experience, MDAT initiated and advocated for a legislative change introducing a specific legal exception for social housing and social rent. This reform was adopted in September 2025 by the Greek Parliament, allowing local authorities to use public property for social housing without renting it to the highest bidder. MDAT is now working with the national government on further fiscal reforms to support social housing delivery.
Source: Interviews with cities.
How the national government can help
Regulatory sandboxes can be useful to assess the opportunities and risks associated with changes to the regulatory environment, in a controlled setting. Typically used to support experimentation of technological innovations, regulatory sandboxes refer to “a temporary regulatory waiver or flexibility, allowing new products, services or business models to be tested with fewer regulatory constraints” (OECD, 2025, p. 5[9]). In this context, sandboxes enable regulators to pilot and evaluate reforms inspired by external ideas, assessing their feasibility and the distributional or regulatory risks that may be associated with wider implementation. Working as a form of regulatory pilot, they would provide further insights that could feed back into a second wave of adaptation. The OECD Regulatory Sandbox Toolkit (OECD, 2025[9]) provides some guidelines for regulators who would wish to explore this option.
Test and pilot the idea before full-scale roll-out
Piloting ideas is a critical step in the adoption of ideas developed elsewhere, enabling cities to assess their contextual fit within local institutional, social and spatial conditions before committing to full-scale implementation. A large majority of cities surveyed (69%) report first testing and evaluating ideas they have adopted from others to mitigate the risk of potential failure and identify the conditions required for citywide scaling. By moving from conceptual inspiration to situated experimentation, pilots generate implementation-specific evidence that informs subsequent adaptation.
By operating at a smaller scale, in a controlled setting and being time-bound, pilots make it possible to experiment with the adoption of borrowed ideas. Pilots can involve regulatory exceptions, or innovative service delivery modes, for instance, without imposing excessive administrative or financial burdens. They also provide a structured opportunity to learn whether the overall concept fits the local context, which elements of an external idea are transferable, which require adaptation and what kind of adaptations, and which may not be suitable to the local context at all. In this sense, pilots help cities learn not only from success, but also from partial or unsuccessful transfers, strengthening future adoption capacity.
Working with universities, community groups, the social economy or private sector actors can play a central role in designing, running and evaluating pilots of borrowed ideas. These actors can help cities translate an external concept into a testable local intervention, contribute technical expertise to pilot design, and support data collection and analysis during the testing phase.
While local governments often engage such stakeholders on an ad hoc basis, more structured arrangements – such as formal partnerships, living labs or joint pilot programmes – can strengthen the quality and credibility of pilot results, and accelerate learning about what aspects of an idea are transferable. Reflecting this, a majority of surveyed cities (64%) actively encourage experimentation within their administrations, relying primarily on cross-sectoral collaboration (87%) and public involvement mechanisms, such as citizen assemblies (65%), to test, refine and validate externally inspired initiatives before scaling.
Implementation tip
Pilots can be useful tools to kickstart the implementation of an idea adopted from elsewhere, and feedback into the adaptation process before full roll-out. However, they need to be carefully designed and evaluated to generate meaningful insights and limit biases (OECD, 2025[10]; OECD, 2023[11]; OECD, 2020[12]; Beets et al., 2021[13]). In practice, this may involve:
Define learning objectives upfront: clarify which of the assumptions underpinning the idea are being tested (e.g. institutional capacity, user behaviour, cost structure, regulatory fit);
Choose pilot settings strategically to reflect the contexts in which the idea is most likely to be scaled, and where lessons on transferability and local adaptation will be most relevant (e.g. piloting a new active mobility programme in an area benefitting from a disproportionately high number of protected cycling lanes might yield overtly optimistic results);
Prepare participants thoroughly to minimise behaviour changes driven by perceived evaluator expectations (e.g. using a micromobility service daily while they would not have done outside of the pilot setting);
Ensure rigorous evaluation by establishing data collection and analysis protocols in advance, and by securing the resources and expertise needed to independently assess both outcomes and implementation conditions;
Manage expectations transparently: pilot participants and beneficiaries should have clarity on the timeline, the degree of uncertainty regarding future roll-out, and which elements of the idea are provisional and subject to change based on pilot results.
Engage political leadership early to secure sustained support for the pilot and build understanding of the adoption process, as political backing will be critical for subsequent scaling. Before even planning a pilot, it is important to ensure local government staff can benefit from safe spaces to launch these pilots without fear of unsuccessful outcomes reflecting negatively on them. The action “Empower staff to find and experiment with ideas from elsewhere” provides some guidance on that point.
Urban Living Labs (ULL) are “designated physical spaces in cities where different parties research, develop, and test new products or services by engaging with local users to tackle urban problems” (Voorwinden, van Bueren and Verhoef, 2023[14]). They offer a setting for local authorities and private stakeholders to jointly develop these solutions, consulting potential end-users at every stage. Urban Living Labs can be a tool for adapting ideas from elsewhere before implementation: they can serve as a platform for local stakeholder consultation, and as resources for launching and evaluating pilots.
In The Hague (the Netherlands), the municipality established the Living Lab Scheveningen in 2020 as a dedicated space to co-create and test innovative solutions with local residents, schools and businesses under real urban conditions along the Scheveningen boulevard. While the Living Lab’s primary focus is experimentation rather than adopting ideas from elsewhere, it provides a strong institutional structure through which external ideas can be assessed, tested and adapted before wider implementation. The Living Lab functions as a transversal resource for all municipal departments wishing to pilot smart solutions, offering access to a real-life testing environment, piloting and IT expertise, established methods for working with local communities, and a network of private-sector partners.
Source: Interviews with cities; Voorwinden, Astrid; van Bueren, Ellen; Verhoef, Leendert (2023[14]), Experimenting with collaboration in the Smart City: Legal and governance structures of Urban Living Labs, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2023.101875.
How the national government can help
National governments can support cities undertaking pilots by setting clear guidelines and providing targeted funding for pilots and their evaluation. In the United States, the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Grant Program funded local projects that tested ways to improve community cohesion through transport. The Pilot Program for Transit-Oriented Development similarly supported local pilot projects linking land-use planning and transit projects.
Give back: disseminate your own good practices
An adopter city that has benefitted from information shared by peers can, in turn, become an originator city by disseminating its own practices through accessible and well-targeted channels. While such efforts are often framed in terms of reciprocity within city networks, they also serve more strategic purposes. Internally, documenting implementation processes and reflecting on outcomes offer an opportunity to consolidate institutional knowledge and demonstrate results to political leadership. Externally, disseminating local practices can strengthen a city’s visibility and credibility, attract partners and funding opportunities, and position it within international policy conversations.
At the same time, cities rarely face strong formal incentives to invest in dissemination beyond reputational benefits. Engaging with other cities, responding to requests, and documenting practices requires time and administrative capacity that may otherwise be devoted to service delivery or the development of new initiatives. Cities therefore face a trade-off between sharing knowledge and advancing their own policy agendas, which may limit the extent or depth of dissemination efforts. Recognising this tension is important: effective dissemination often depends on embedding it within existing workflows (e.g. evaluation, reporting, communication), rather than treating it as an additional standalone task.
A study by Haupt et al. (2019[15]), based on interviews with 35 local policymakers working in cities involved in international knowledge sharing networks, and seven representatives of municipal networks, examined how city officials use external knowledge. The findings suggests that officials are primarily interested in technical and operational insights: how to implement certain technologies or methodologies, how to access funding, how to interpret results in context. Several cities consulted in this study also stress that the most useful information is not about what works, but about how it works in practice: how was the initiative delivered, by whom, at what cost, and with what outcomes. Codifying and sharing such detailed and experience-based knowledge can significantly reduce uncertainty and transaction costs for other cities seeking to adopt similar approaches.
Implementation tip
There are different ways cities can share information about their own practices:
Becoming engaged in peer-learning networks, both national and international, to disseminate knowledge about one’s practices. This is also a way to discuss with other cities, receive feedback on one’s practices and improve interventions over time;
Designating a contact point for cities that would wish to receive more information from the originator city. This contact point should have enough time to answer these requests, and have access to pre-defined, vetted resources they would be able to share in a swift manner.
Setting up a Q&A webpage for each idea that receives a lot of attention, to make sure any information shared with one city can be easily accessible to more.
Sharing any relevant evaluation data on open data portals, to support assessment efforts.
Publishing evaluation reports and being transparent about changes made based on these results.
Sharing takeaways from stakeholder consultations to show which aspects of the policy were developed to answer the local context and should thus be adapted to ensure efficient application in another context.
Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) has been active in disseminating information about its own successes. The local government is active in networks, such as C40, and always endeavours to share obstacles as well as successes to help others learn from honest insights. Rio has also created a regional movement bringing together other Brazilian cities to collaborate around shared issues.
In considering its role as an originator city, Rome (Italy) stressed that sharing back implies also reflecting on one’s project and unpacking it to identify the main building blocks (policy framework, governance, administrative procedure, financial aspects, metrics used for impact assessment). Rome shares its ideas by (i) preparing pre-meeting reading materials for adopter cities; (ii) ensuring the right-level of involvement in onsite visits; (iii) involving professional moderators or facilitators to make sure visits are productive and smooth; (iv) involving a wide range of local stakeholders from the originator city, including beneficiaries; (v) leaving space for informal conversations; (vi) following up with remote sessions to answer any remaining questions. To Rome, dedicating time and resources to these peer-learning meetings is also an opportunity for the originator city to reflect on its own practices to further improve their interventions.
Vienna (Austria) has a very structured approach to supporting peers, from providing detailed resources online and in English, to making itself available for visits from international delegations. The Austrian capital strongly believes helping other cities, especially in neighbouring countries, benefits all by contributing to the emergence of a stronger region, and a stronger Europe. This conviction encourages Vienna to be generous with its time and knowledge, with the International Department as the backbone of this approach.
Source: Interviews with cities.
How the national government can help
The national government can help by (Haupt et al., 2019[15]; ITF, 2024[16]):
Setting up nation-wide knowledge exchange networks, easing the sharing of ideas among cities located in a similar legal, institutional and cultural context. In-person exchanges allow to combine formal learning through workshops and seminars, with informal learnings through unplanned discussions.
Collecting data about interesting local-level initiatives in a structured manner to ease comparison. This process should be properly resourced so as not to become a burden to local governments
Sharing this data with vetted stakeholders (e.g. local and regional governments, public agencies, selected foreign partners) on an online platform.
Supporting the translation of relevant information resources to the local language, as many networks tend to publish in English only.
References
[1] Baack, F. et al. (2024), “Deciding climate change adaptation implementation at the local level – a tale of two cities in the Netherlands”, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, pp. 1-21, https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2024.2418345.
[13] Beets, M. et al. (2021), “Small studies, big decisions: the role of pilot/feasibility studies in incremental science and premature scale-up of behavioral interventions”, Pilot and Feasibility Studies, Vol. 7/1, https://doi.org/10.1186/s40814-021-00909-w.
[2] Enseñado, E. (2023), “City-to-city learning: a synthesis and research agenda”, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, Vol. 26/1, pp. 14-29, https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908x.2023.2281426.
[5] Girma Abebe, H. (2023), Ethical Issues in the Adoption and Implementation of Vision Zero Policies in Road Safety, KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
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