Placemaking and the Urban Living Lab for Students’ Social Learning and Innovation in Education: The Case of Heerlen

Learning with a neighbourhood, not only about it

In this paper, we explored the Urban Living Lab as an educational setting as well as a way to improve a place. Our case is Heerlen-Noord and the Aurora flat, a 228-home social-housing block in a neighbourhood shaped by the long aftermath of mine closure, poverty, ageing, stigma and cultural diversity. We asked what changes when placemaking, co-creation and a real local challenge become part of students’ education instead of remaining an external case study.

Placemaking gave the work its practical direction: improve a place step by step, in response to what communities value. The Urban Living Lab created the setting for that work. Residents, the housing association, researchers, teachers and students met in the neighbourhood, shared knowledge, identified needs and developed interventions together. Local experience was treated as essential evidence, not as feedback collected after a design was finished.

What students learned at Aurora

The starting point was an underused parking courtyard. During the Aurora Days, we organised informal pizza sessions, photo discussions and Walk & Talks with children, older residents, mothers, single residents and migrants. These encounters built familiarity and revealed how the place was experienced. The Aurora Challenge then brought students from built environment, occupational therapy and nursing into international, cross-level teams to develop spatial scenarios. Circular furniture, made with vocational-education support, became an early visible intervention.

We analysed the learning through four dimensions: belonging, becoming, experience and doing. Students became part of a local community, shaped a professional identity alongside other disciplines and stakeholders, dealt with real-life uncertainty and took responsibility for reflective action. Those capacities matter because urban transformation requires more than technical skill. It requires people who can collaborate across boundaries and understand the social consequences of design decisions.

The Living Lab created value on three levels. It opened a different planning approach in a neighbourhood facing difficult conditions, it connected education and research to a real societal challenge, and it helped local partners respond to immediate needs while imagining longer-term futures. We found that students can contribute directly to urban transformation when they are trusted as co-creators in a place-based process.