There is a growing academic and policy interest in the notion of using cities as ‘living laboratories’ to develop and test responses to the social, environmental and economic challenges present in contemporary urbanism. These living laboratories are often assumed to function through ‘quadruple helix’ relations between varied actors from the public, private, university and community sectors. However, empirical research that explores the real-world functioning of these arrangements is comparatively limited. This paper will help address this gap through the case of Newcastle City Futures (NCF) – a university-anchored platform for collaborative urban foresight research, public engagement and innovation. In particular, the paper will concentrate on a two-year period when NCF focused on the facilitation of innovation demonstrator projects guided by the vision of Newcastle upon Tyne developing a postindustrial future as a ‘test-bed city’. Detailed empirical accounts of the development of two demonstrator projects are used to illustrate and analyse processes of cross-sectoral collaboration and engaging the public in co-design. These are used to support the conceptual argument that the presence of the quadruple helix as a form of local innovation system should not be taken as given. Instead, the collaborative relationships required for transformational interventions in the future of cities need to be actively constructed by diverse actors and supported by intermediary vehicles such as NCF.

中文翻译：

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为城市创新构建协作平台：纽卡斯尔城市期货作为四螺旋中介

使用城市作为“活实验室”来开发和测试对当代城市化中存在的社会、环境和经济挑战的反应的概念越来越受到学术和政策的关注。这些活的实验室通常被认为是通过公共、私人、大学和社区部门的不同参与者之间的“四螺旋”关系发挥作用的。然而，探索这些安排在现实世界中的功能的实证研究相对有限。本文将通过纽卡斯尔城市未来 (NCF) 的案例来帮助解决这一差距，这是一个以大学为基础的合作城市前瞻性研究、公众参与和创新的平台。特别是，这篇论文将集中在两年期间，NCF 专注于促进创新示范项目，该项目以泰恩河畔纽卡斯尔的愿景为指导，将后工业未来发展为“试验台城市”。两个示范项目开发的详细经验说明用于说明和分析跨部门合作和让公众参与共同设计的过程。这些被用来支持概念论点，即不应将四螺旋的存在视为一种本地创新系统形式。相反，城市未来转型干预所需的协作关系需要由不同的参与者积极构建，并得到 NCF 等中介工具的支持。