Experimental approaches are rarely used by urban planners, architects and designers. For years I have been pointing out the opportunity for planners to study their city experimentally (see references below). In fact, this is why I called my reserach group City Lab Barcelona – precisely because I am interested in thinking about ways we can develop experiments to learn about how and why cities work.
And while experiments, and field experiments in particular, offer new ways to learn about our cities, they are still rarely used. A scoping review published today in Current Environmental Health Reports finds only 26 studies used an experimental appraoch to understand the health impacts of urban interventions (Bretones Diaz et al 2026). Furthermore, two thirds of these studies were what we called “environmental exposure” studies, in which participants were exposed to green spaces and urban spaces, with subsequent measurements to document improvements in physcical health and mental health. In other words, these green exposure studies show how being in green spaces makes us feel better.
But the overwhelming number of studies focusing on green/blue spaces suggests there is a missed opportunity to apply field experiments to other types of built environment interventions. We found a highly creative yet small group of studies that have attempted to use an experimental framework to study innovative change, and with the rise in tactical urbanism, we expect more. For example, there was a study that deployed a food truck, another that studied a parklet, and another in which actors in public space “lost” an object to see how people would respond. This indicates that some researchers are thinking experimentally, but overall, we have a long way to go to incorporate experimental approaches in urban research. I hope that in the next decade, we can see more experimental designs in urban planning research.
I am grateful to my excellent co-authors, Alexandra Diaz Bretones and Samuel Nello-Deakin, as well as to the editor of Current Environmental Health Reports, Dr. David Rojas.
References
Bretones Diaz, A., S. Nello-Deakin, J. Honey-Rosés 2026. Field Experiments on Health and the Built Environment in Urban Settings: A Scoping Review. Current Environmental Health Reports 13(22) doi: 10.1007/s40572-026-00539-5
Honey-Rosés, J., M. Stevens. 2019. A Commentary on the Absence of Experiments in Planning. Journal of Planning Education and Research 39(3) 267-272 doi: 10.1177/0739456X17739352
Honey-Rosés, J. 2019. A Review of Field Experiments in Planning and Urban Research. Planning Practice & Research 34(5) 558-572. doi:10.1080/02697459.2019.1647394
