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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Research on policy mobilities has focused much of its attention on studying how policies-fromelsewhere are learned, mediated and translated into different contexts, either focusing on early (a priori) and late (a
posteriori) stages of policymaking processes without encompassing their full scope. In conceptualising policymaking as
inherently indeterminate, open-ended and processual, this article introduces the ways in which pilot policy
experiments mediate the intersections between a priori and a posteriori phases of policymaking processes. Drawing on
the case of three Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) policy programmes in Greater Barcelona (Spain) and Greater
Lisbon (Portugal), we discuss the importance of pilot policy experimentation through four key practices: Concept
testing, generative learning and knowledge exchange, stakeholder engagement and policy translation. While not always
comprehensive, teleological or hermetically separate, these practices serve as a heuristic framework to illustrate how
policy experimentation shapes the learning, mediation and translation of urban policies across different policymaking
stages. In so doing, we invite policy mobilities scholars to explore further the experimentation with urban policies as
arenas in which policies-from-elsewhere are locally constituted and reconstituted across the diverse stages and
temporalities of policymaking.
Description
Keywords
Policy mobilities Experimental policies Urban policy experimentation Urban policies Business improvement districts
Pedagogical Context
Citation
Silva, D. G. & Frago, L. (2025). Experimentation and Policy Mobilities: Piloting Business Improvement Districts in Southern European Cities. Finisterra Revista Portuguesa de Geografia, 60(128), e36947. https://doi.org/10.18055/Finis36947
Publisher
Centro de Estudos Geográficos, Universidade de Lisboa