How urban experiments redefine problems, imaginaries and futures: a case study on wireless charging in London and South of England

This paper examines a demonstration project centred on wireless charging infrastructures in the South of England to investigate how the interaction between imaginative work and materialization in urban experiments may reshape and reveal new urban futures. Qualitative data including documentary sources, surveys and semi-structured interviews were subject to reflexive thematic analysis informed by sensitising concepts from curatorial literature. Four themes are identified by attending to the shared concerns of curation and urban experimentation. Urban experiments are thus identified as sites of dialogue (between objects, places and publics); Multiplicity (of materialities, representations and mobilisations); revelatory tension and disruption; and ultimately sites of caring (for things, places and potentials). A case study organised around the four themes reveals practices through which urban experiments create meaning relationally through dialogues and encounters, while drawing tensions to the surface as catalysts to challenge preconceived understandings of the situation. Curatorial practices attend to the process through which an idea becomes spatialized, materialized and visualized. Such processes have been identified as central to urban experiments, as imagination frames experience, leads coherence to everyday life, and opens-up space for counter-narratives and opportunities to question and transform the status quo. The unique contribution of the curatorial framework was that of providing a vocabulary to articulate neglected practices through which urban experiments operate in the interface between materialities, places, publics and meanings.

Experiments such as those intended to address the pressing problems caused by unsustainable automobilities stage encounters through which different, more sustainable urban futures can be envisioned, negotiated and mobilized (Sierhuis et al., 2024; VanHoose and Bertolini, 2023; Caprotti and Cowley, 2017). Thus, experiments hold considerable power to persuade constituencies of actors such as governments, investors and undecided potential adopters of the innovations at the core of the experiment.

As the persuasive power of urban experiments relies on the articulation of plausible, compelling futures, the processes through which some futures, but not others, are collectively agreed to be desirable, plausible and worth pursuing is therefore impactful and profoundly political (Jasanoff, 2020; Zhang, 2018). For example, when low-carbon futures based on urban reconfiguration (e.g., the 15-m city) are framed as unreasonable, alternatives such as like-for-like replacement of internal combustion vehicles by electric cars may be easier to envision. Thus, urban experiments that improve technologies but fail to transform imaginaries may be ultimately used to justify further investments in road networks, perpetuating automobility and urban sprawl while drawing attention away from alternatives such as multi-modal integration and demand-responsive transport (Haarstad et al., 2022).

This paper considers the interaction between materialities, places, publics and imaginaries as futures are co-created or negotiated in urban experiments. We take a demonstrator project centered on wireless charging points deployed in the South of England as an entry point to investigate the co-generative processes though which the materialities of experiments were linked to places, histories and publics and gave rise to potential futures. We observe that such futures were not predetermined by technical performance or by the materialities of the experiment, as various actors had a say on what those materialities were about. This is not to argue the meaning of this or other urban experiments is infinitely malleable. The case illustrates how envisioned futures must be grounded in materialities to be credible, but as those materialities relate to places and publics they may give rise to meanings or imaginaries not anticipated by the designers of the experiment. Importantly, such processes are necessarily selective. As urban futures are (re)shaped by the interaction between imaginative work and materialization (Healey, 2004), the potentials revealed by urban experiments may be selectively filtered, reshaped, or amplified, making some futures appear more credible and desirable than others (Cook and Valdez, 2023).

Curation provides the analytical lens driving the case study at the core of this research. We observe that as various actors use urban experiments to selectively explore alternative futures in places (Marsden et al., 2025; Feola et al., 2023), their practices have considerable overlap with those of curators, working on the interface between materiality and meaning to “filter, organize, craft, and, ultimately, care for a story composed out of-even rescued from-the infinite array of potential tales, relics, and voices” (Burdick et al., 2012:34). Although curation is predominantly associated with museums and art exhibitions it has also been applied as a revelatory metaphor suitable for critical analysis of urban phenomena (Xu et al., 2025; Cook and Valdez, 2023; Tironi, 2020; Kampelmann et al., 2017; Verhoeff and Wilmott, 2016). The analysis in this paper seeks to extend and operationalise a productive metaphor which then becomes an entry point for in-depth engagement with critical and practical literatures on curation. A set of sensitizing concepts with affinity to urban geography but external to it are then developed into an analytical framework. The curatorial framework developed through this article is ultimately used to articulate future-making processes that accord with Forester's (1982) view of planners as selective organizers of attention, enacted by taking care of complex ecologies of humans and non-humans (Metzger, 2025, 2014).

The research question driving this article is “how is the interaction of materialities, imagination and attention managed in urban experiments, and how can it be leveraged to reveal or create more transformative urban futures?” This question was formulated to trace the trajectories of a technical infrastructure demonstrator that did not ultimately result in immediate adoption of the technology being demonstrated nor in the creation of new routes to market but succeeded in revealing new aspects of the challenges it was meant to address. Importantly, such challenges in turn suggested new ways to imagine places as well as new paths toward the low carbon urban futures the demonstrator was meant to help attain. In subsequent sections, a multi-site case study focused on wireless charging infrastructures for electric vehicles (EVs) is analyzed through a curatorial lens. Curation is introduced as the foundation of a novel analytical framework for situated inquiries through which encounters (of objects, publics, places and imaginaries) create meaning, reveal new aspects of complex issues and create spaces for the governance of emerging innovations in which new urban futures can be nurtured.

Background

The On-Street Residential Induction Charging (OSRIC) demonstrator was part of a £37 million investment by Innovate UK and the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV) intended to transform electric charging infrastructure to support record levels of electric vehicles (EVs) on United Kindom roads. Government strategy envisioned a future defined by widespread EV adoption, assumed that the majority of charging would take place at home and identified home charging as a “key attraction” of owning an EV (HM Government, 2021). However, 30% of the households in the United Kindom do not have allocated off-street parking. Consequently, the tension between existing materialities and the envisioned future implied a new problem as some 10 million electric cars and vans would be regularly parked and charged overnight on-street in the United Kindom by 2050 (HM Government, 2022).

OSRIC was one of 18 infrastructure and technology demonstrators formed to develop solutions to the urban problems anticipated in the British EV strategy. The demonstrator brought together infrastructure providers, technology developers, universities and local authorities (LAs) to assess the potential of inductive power transmission for providing public EV charging without increasing street clutter. OSRIC deployed wireless chargers for EVs in several locations across the United Kindom: the city of Milton Keynes, the county of Buckinghamshire and the London Borough of Redbridge. Activities including technical development, planning, site selection, public engagement and consultation commenced in January 2020.

The technology at the core of the OSRIC demonstrator was an induction charging plate designed to draw energy from lampposts. Hidden under the pavement, the plates could be used to transfer power over an air gap of approximately 12 cm and recharge the batteries of electric vehicles equipped with a suitable adapter. Inductive chargepoints have been a subject of considerable interest in research and policy (Ahmed et al., 2024) but such technologies are predominantly deployed in controlled environments ranging from covered garages to experimental precincts. In contrast, the chargepoints developed for OSRIC would be deployed in public space (Figure 1), prioritizing on-street settings where they could be readily connected to the power supply already available to power lampposts. The original definition of the device thus envisioned low-power (3 kW) chargepoints that could be deployed at scale on-street and in public space without increasing street clutter and without demanding reinforcement of the electricity distribution network.

The first wireless charger was installed in August 2021 and wirelessly charged vehicles were available for use by the public for a total of 10 months, fulfilling the project's objectives of demonstrating the potential of wireless technologies for the provision of clutter-free on-street charging of EVs. A total of 41 unique users joined the demonstrator by driving cars with wireless charging capabilities during the period covered by the study, with most of them becoming repeat users. 15 users booked the car once, 13 twice, and the top three users made 11 bookings each. 120 bookings were made across the selected locations between 27th August 2021 and 2nd July 2022.

Although the OSRIC project demonstrated the technology successfully and received a positive public response, the cost structure of the chargepoint installation and return on investment indicated that, even if produced at scale, this design would not be financially viable. The technology at the core of the demonstrator could not be adopted on a permanent basis in any of the locations because the project could not be continued, much less scaled up, without additional external funding. Consequently, the wireless charging plates were removed immediately after its conclusion. However, OSRIC revealed new aspects of the challenge of supporting EV adoption in each site, which in turn suggested different approaches to support zero-emission mobility without adding street clutter while supporting contextually defined goals of LAs. Local authorities in Marlow and Redbridge favored wired lamppost chargers while the city council in Milton Keynes favored neighborhood charging hubs and trialed “through-pavement channels” with hinged lids allowing users to place a charging cable across the pavement without creating a trip hazard. Ultimately, the “solutions” that emerged in each site relied on relatively low-technology approaches as well as changes in established practices, services and patterns of automobility, addressing new definitions of the problem which were only loosely connected to the original framing of using wireless technologies to support on-street charging at home. The remainder of this paper will investigate how the materialities of a wireless charging demonstrator that was ultimately discontinued nevertheless stimulated dialogues and imaginative work which produced new, site-specific knowledges and redefined the problems it was meant to address.

Data were collected by researchers participating in a demonstrator of wireless charging infrastructures for EVs between 2020 and 2022. Initial data collection covered all stages of the project including its planning, deployment, continued use by residents in three locations across the South of England, and ultimately the conclusion of the demonstrator. Follow-up activities arising from the demonstrator were then monitored between 2022 and 2026 to assess the long-term impact of the demonstrator in the urban futures implied by the transport strategies and policies of the locales where the wireless chargers were deployed. Qualitative data included 25 semi-structured interviews, lasting approximately 45 m each, with users, residents, local authorities (LAs) and industry actors, as well as 33 surveys of users and of residents of the areas where vehicles were available and induction chargepoints were deployed. Interviewees were selected through a purposive sampling strategy. All eligible participants were invited either directly or through local communication channels (e.g., sustainable transport pages in city council's websites and parish council newsletters). Interviews with policy and industry actors were centered on their expectations and agendas regarding the future of EV charging in general and wireless charging more specifically. Interviews and surveys of users and residents were centered on their experience of the wirelessly charged vehicles, their perception of the urban spaces where wireless chargers were installed, and their expectations for the future of electric vehicles and charging infrastructures as suggested or revealed by the demonstrator. Data collection also included quantitative data where relevant, for instance when automatically generated timestamps of booking and charging events were used to triangulate against qualitative self-reporting regarding user acceptance and usage patterns.

Results were collated into a qualitative case study (Robson and McCartan, 2016; Flyvbjerg, 2006; Miles and Huberman, 1994) structured around themes identified through data analysis aligned to the principles and methods of Reflexive Thematic Analysis (RTA). RTA is a qualitative, theoretically flexible approach in which themes are developed through interpretative work in the part of the researcher, which is acknowledged to be inherently subjective (Braun and Clarke, 2021, 2006). Rather than attempting to provide objective descriptions of the world as it exists or as it is experienced by interviewees, the critical orientation of RTA supports a focus on the interrogation of socially embedded patterns of meaning, their implications and their effects (Braun and Clarke, 2021; Byrne, 2022).

First, familiarization with the data was sought as researchers transcribed recorded interviews and closely read selected documents, highlighted passages that appeared interesting or revelatory, and sought for initial thematic patterns (that is, the open coding stage in Williams and Moser, 2019, or “generation of initial codes” in Braun and Clarke, 2021). While the use of the seemingly subjective terms “interesting” and “revelatory” may be considered problematic and indicative of biased, unsystematic choices, RTA discourages attempts to provide accounts of accurate and reliable coding as claims of “unbiased” analysis and of spontaneous “emergence” and “discovery” lead to passive accounts that deny the active role of researchers (Byrne, 2022; Braun and Clarke, 2006).

Following initial familiarization with the data, a tentative codebook was developed drawing on sensitizing concepts from Strategic Niche Management and relational geography (Raven, 2024; Sumartojo and Pink, 2018; Massey, 2005; Healey, 2006; Hoogma et al., 2005) considered relevant for analyzing the management of the interface between materiality and imagination (Figure 2).

A small corpus of ten primary sources was selected for a first stage of analysis in order to test and refine the coding scheme. Recordings of interviews with industry and policy actors were produced, transcribed and used to test the first iteration of the coding scheme. When recordings were unavailable, interviewers took detailed notes which were then transcribed and coded. Coding was done on paper using highlighters and pen, but a MS Word version of the highlighted and coded data was later produced for archival (Figure 3).

The codes used at this stage had a narrow analytical scope as the authors original intent was to investigate relational and affective responses to urban experiments in place (Cook and Valdez, 2021; Sumartojo and Pink, 2018), but the organic, unstructured coding process in RTA leaves room for potential codes to evolve to capture the researcher's deepening understanding of the data (Braun and Clarke, 2021). The scope of analysis was expanded as codes were grouped, aligned and iteratively redefined to create distinct thematic categories (“axial coding” in Williams and Moser, 2019, or “generating themes” and “reviewing potential themes” in Braun and Clarke, 2021). Initial attempts at axial coding suggested that affective responses to urban experiments were shaped by various imaginaries of places which were situated and informed by materialities, histories and futures, as well as by selective attention to perceived problems and potential solutions (Metzger and Tamm-Hallström, 2022; Söderström et al., 2020). Initial coding also drew attention to various forms of selection, filtering, framing and attention management strategically mobilized through such experiments. Consequently, most of the original codes informed by Strategic Niche Management were either discarded or opened up (e.g., with passages originally coded using the SNM concept of “articulation and coupling of expectations” re-coded at a higher level of granularity to investigate multiple, distinct processes through which such articulations were pursued). The codebook was further developed following re-familiarization with the data after exposure to sensitizing concepts drawn from curatorial literature. Curation, defined as the creation of meaning through the selection, organization of and care for a constellation of elements (Verhoeff and Wilmott, 2016) was first encountered by researchers as a productive metaphor. Although other works applying curation as a metaphor to analyse urban phenomena were identified (Xu et al., 2025; Tironi, 2020; Kampelmann et al., 2017; Verhoeff and Wilmott, 2016), limited attempts at systematic engagement with the relevant literatures and practices were identified. A systematic engagement with curatorial literatures was thus sought by the researchers to develop a set of sensitizing concepts which, in turn, provided the foundations for a novel analytical framework.

Selective coding, the third and final level of coding (or “defining and naming themes” in Braun and Clarke, 2021), relies on the selection and integration of the categories generated in preceding steps to generate meaning and formulate “the story of the case” (Flick, 2009:310 in Williams and Moser, 2019). The critical perspective developed through the cross-disciplinary dialogue between theory and data attends to curation (i.e., selection and attention management at the interface of materiality and imagination) in the governance of urban experiments as symbolic and material elements are strategically “bundled” in representations of places and their possible futures (Feola et al., 2023). Themes arising from this analysis and discussed in this section are:

Dialogues (between objects, places and publics)

Multiplicity (of materialities, representations and mobilisations)

Tension and disruption (and imagining otherwise)

Caring (for things, for places, for potentials)

Consistent with the cannon of RTA, the themes above are not presented as the result of objective description and categorization of surface data. Rather, as we attempt to identify underlying assumptions and latent ideas, interpretive analysis required a more creative and active role by the researchers (Byrne, 2022), which in this case was applied to articulate latent processes of strategic selection and collective sense-making relevant to the critical analysis and governance of urban experiments, as presented in the following section.

Theme 1: OSRIC as a site of dialogue between objects, places and publics

The premise for this theme is that urban experiments are sites of curation, in the sense that their meaning emerges through the selection and organization of objects, attending to their interrelations and to the enhanced meanings that may generate in their dialogue with each other and with various places and publics (Verhoeff and Wilmott, 2016). This theme was thus developed by coding data pertaining to the actors who created the conditions for dialogues or interactions, to their decisions regarding selective attention to and organization of interactions, knowledges, imaginaries and potentials.

Technology demonstrators such as OSRIC have a dual remit. Demonstrators increase confidence in new technologies to support the development of early markets, and they also introduce such technologies in real-world environments so that whole-system insight can be captured (RAEng, 2018). This dual remit was encouraged by the Office for Zero Emission Vehicles (OZEV), which supported OSRIC as part of a cohort of projects meant to produce evidence that could be abstracted and applied elsewhere but also encouraged project partners to capture learning relevant to their own contexts and interests. Consequently, the places where wireless chargers were deployed became sites of extended dialogue between the chargers and the publics, places, histories, materialities and challenges associated with each demonstrator.

Dialogues and encounters centered on the wireless chargers were facilitated by actors with urban remits, such as the various transport and innovation officers supporting the wireless-charging experiment. In all instances, installation of the wireless chargers was preceded by careful consideration of the specific place-based challenges of the sites where infrastructures were to be deployed. Local authorities were also aware of the likely affective responses various publics may have to the devices and the meanings they would attribute to them, ranging from the positive (e.g., by members of the Buckinghamshire EV Club) to the intensely negative (e.g., by neighbors who had previously resisted the installation of chargepoints in areas of natural beauty). Such affective and symbolic aspects of infrastructure were not inherent to the materialities of the charging devices but could be expected to be significantly different as chargers were deployed in different places, put to different uses, and encountered by various publics. Consideration of such interactions was a central concern during the planning of the demonstrator.

Planning was informed by anticipation of the meanings that would be likely attributed to the demonstrator but an equally important consideration was that of creating opportunities for new meanings to emerge. The charging points and the dialogues stimulated by their introduction created spaces where new mobility futures could be envisioned and pursued. LAs undertook the bulk of the labor involved in building relations and finding shared meanings by drawing attention to specific futures and imagined interactions of places and technologies. LAs negotiated and aligned local and external agendas as the demonstrator was used to seek input from and enter into dialogue with actors with neighborhood-level knowledge of the potential sites and their practices (e.g., neighborhood associations, property developers, parish councilors).

Although dialogue and encounters were facilitated by organizers of the demonstrator, and particularly local authorities, publics were not simply passive or reactive. Residents and users interviewed made a deliberate effort to join the demonstrator and inform its future. As is often the case with innovative technologies, the wireless plates had performance issues early in the life of the project, but most users cared enough to keep using the vehicles despite the teething pains-for example, finding alternative charging points when the wireless charger failed to provide enough charge to complete the trip they had planned. As they embraced the challenges of using infrastructures in the making, users expected to inform its future developments, as well as the sustainable transport futures of their respective locations. As they did so, they gave voice to their own problems (e.g., lack of access to parking, which made it difficult to charge an EV or even to own a car) and made them visible to organizers of the demonstrator. Some interviewees had specific challenges that they hoped the technology could address, such as taxi/private hire drivers affected by London's Ultra-Low Emission Zone (HM Government, 2021). Users who supported the demonstrator through their participation were simultaneously oriented toward their own present and toward their future and that of their communities, providing evidence and engaging in dialogues about the roles of EVs, car clubs and wireless charging in potential futures for their neighborhoods. Those dialogues revealed various potential meanings and futures for the technology.

Theme 2: Multiplicity of representations and mobilisations

The premise behind this theme is that urban experiments are characterized by tensions arising as place-based priorities are conditioned by distant actors such as national governments and transnational corporations, whose agendas frequently prioritize standardization and scale (Torrens and von Wirth, 2021; Hodson and Evans, 2018). As demonstrators introduce technologies to diverse real-world environments, processes characterized by asymmetrical power relations, conflicts, negotiations and struggles that extend over multiple locations create opportunities to resist homogenizing forces by envisioning and pursuing multiple, situated futures. This theme was therefore developed by attending to data which revealed dominant imaginaries about the futures of charging infrastructures, as well as alternatives, counter-narratives, situated futures and potentials suggested by the demonstrator and its materialities.

This theme thus attended to curatorial perspectives on demonstrators conceptualized as exhibits which, while drawing on global circulations (e.g., of materials, of ideas, of expertise) are always site-specific, as curation cultivates interactions to challenge the modernist order in which elements and artifacts remain “separate alongside each other, segregated” (Lind and Wood, 2010:150). As exhibitions change places, each place also changes the exhibition, introducing continual feedback effects between the local and the global (Obrist, 2014).

Contemporary perspectives on multi-sited curation advise that objects are not simply dropped into separate spatial units. Rather, places are perceived as multiple, intertwined and situated within a series of mutually dependent flows and networks where topics or conflicts can be traced across several sites. The multiple knowledges produced in such sites are thus considered situated and contextual, and yet able to enter dialogues with impact and relevance beyond the site itself (Nielsen, 2019). In the case of OSRIC, when wireless chargers were introduced to three locations, they were subject to different interpretations, with their deployment shaped by diverse issues and used in various ways to support the contextually defined goals of various communities and publics. Consequently, knowledges and meanings produced by the OSRIC experiment were mobilized to different ends in each location following the conclusion of the experiment.

Wireless charging in Buckinghamshire responded to the challenges of supporting EV adoption in Victorian towns whose design preceded the invention of the automobile and, consequently, had very limited provision of spaces for parking and for off-street charging. This was the case for Marlow (Figure 4), a market town with a population of 14,000 characterized by high car ownership (89%) and by the limited availability of parking spaces owing to the Victorian layout of its terraced housing. Chargepoints were deployed in car parks owned by LAs, and surveys revealed that the wirelessly charged vehicles, made available through a eCar club, were most attractive to 2-driver households with access to only one car. This suggested that the eCar club model was attractive as a replacement for a second car, with an electric vehicle potentially replacing a large number of diesel or petrol cars, reducing overall emissions and reducing the demand for limited parking spaces in residential areas. Although several respondents indicated that they joined the car club because of curiosity regarding wireless charging, ultimately they found it to be the least important aspect of the project and found the zero-emission car club more relevant and potentially transformative.

The introduction of wireless chargers in Milton Keynes (MK), a city founded in 1967 with the specific intention of showcasing new ways of living in cities, responded to an innovation-driven agenda that sought to explore the role and interaction of various charging infrastructures and sustainable mobility technologies. Consequently, local authorities in MK sought to deploy wireless chargepoints in the context of a residential charging hub where slow and rapid chargers would also be available to users to explore wireless charging as part of a portfolio of charging technologies linked to low carbon mobility. In this case there was some tension between the expectations of the residents of the Ashland Lakes housing estate (Figure 5), who were concerned about limited options available for public transport, and the innovation-driven agenda of LAs. Ultimately, public transport issues in areas underserved by commercial bus services were addressed through a Demand Responsive Transport scheme (Potter et al., 2024), while LAs in MK continued to find the wireless charging concept attractive and later deployed an improved version of the demonstrator that supported considerably higher charging rates (Ridge et al., 2021). EV policy in MK also continued to support the deployment of community hubs located in both commercial and residential areas to support residents' daily routines as well as super hubs with high-capacity charging capability located in busy areas to serve a large number of vehicles at peak times.

Finally, wireless chargepoints in Redbridge, a borough in North East London with a population of approx. 300,000, were deployed in on-street locations in line with the original project objectives (Figure 6). Here, the materialities of the device and the practices of residents proved most resistant to the project as originally conceived. Installation of the wireless charging plates was difficult because of the need to dig 1 × 1 × 1 m access chambers which required careful planning to avoid damaging underground pipes and wires and required cooperation from residents not to park in ways that could prevent the installation of the chargepoint or its use by EVs. Although the device was the same for Buckinghamshire, MK and Redbridge, the decision to install the device on-street and parking pressures specific to London created a different set of challenges. Interaction of the demonstrator and place-specific imaginaries was also informed by the 2021 expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) of central London, which included western areas of Redbridge. Most vehicles, including cars and vans, needed to meet strict emission standards or pay a daily charge to travel within the ULEZ. This added urgency to the need to support electric mobility. The demonstrator suggested that wireless infrastructures could not be scaled rapidly, and residents demonstrated limited tolerance for the disruption required to deploy wireless chargers. Consequently, the borough's EV strategy was ultimately updated to support the electrification of existing car clubs while relying on conventional wired technologies. Dedicated EV chargepoints were added to existing car club bays, and partnerships with ride-hailing companies led to deployments of rapid chargepoints suitable for use by taxis and private hire vehicles.

The OSRIC demonstrator drew attention to qualities of place that were common to all three sites but also to their unique features and challenges. Consequently, the experiment supported different representations of the problem in each site which in turn suggested different approaches to support zero-emission mobility without adding street clutter. By extending the scope of attention beyond the device itself and including places, publics and practices, site-specific transport futures were articulated. Importantly, such futures were triggered by the charging device but did not rely on it. LAs in Marlow and Redbridge favored lamppost chargers and LAs in MK favored neighborhood charging hubs and also trialed “through-pavement channels” with hinged lids allowing users to place a charging cable across the pavement without creating a trip hazard. Ultimately, the solutions that emerged in each site relied in combinations of relatively low-technology solutions as well as changes in the practices, services and patterns of automobility, addressing new definitions of the problem which were only loosely connected to the original framing of using wireless technologies to support on-street charging at home.

The case of OSRIC also revealed that attunement to situatedness and multiplicity requires an acknowledgment of multiple forms of expertise. Bjerregaard (2019) has noted that the curator was once the one who knew about objects and could communicate their meanings, but this role is challenged when the exhibition is about learning something new. In contrast to exhibitions which dislocate objects from sites and assume that publics are without knowledge and curators with it (Riding, 2021), in OSRIC the designers of the experiment were positioned as the ones without knowledge (of places, of practices, of encounters). Rather, knowledges of people situated in many different relational positions contributed to complex imaginaries through which local actors were able to read emergent potentialities, using the OSRIC experiment as a site where multiple interpretations of place, practice and potential could encounter each other and call up new meanings (Healey, 2006).

Theme 3: tension and disruption

The premise behind this theme is that the objects at the core of urban experiments can be used to broadcast or reinforce a pre-existing idea of what the future should be like or, alternatively, they can create opportunities to disrupt dominant imaginaries and initiate dialogues about alternatives and new potentials. Analysis of this theme attended to instances where the OSRIC demonstrator drew attention to tensions and conflicts caused by existing or envisioned forms of automobility. Urban experiments are often presented as rational and apolitical, optimizing the status quo and focusing attention away from tensions and debates that make transformative futures possible. Radical alternatives often become invisible or are framed as unreasonable, thus preventing their mobilization (Sierhuis et al., 2024). In this sense, demonstrators centered on building markets and reassuring technology developers, investors and potential partners are analogous to the exhibitionary complex that characterized curation in the 19th century, when exhibitions acted as mechanisms of control in the Foucauldian sense by embracing unambiguous narratives to broadcast messages of power (Sheikh, 2019; Bennett, 2018). There is a risk that as demonstrators prioritize consensus-building and even seduction they may deliberately draw attention away from generative tensions and disruptions which, if embraced, would provide opportunities to move away from problem-validating curatorial logics and toward problem-making logics, making frictions tangible to articulate latent concerns and open up alternative scenarios (Tironi, 2020).

Actors in the OSRIC demonstrator were open to frank discussion of the tensions revealed by the device, acknowledged in internal conversation and also in reports to the funding agencies. As LAs and project leaders were willing to embrace the tensions and learn from them, their inquiry closely aligned with deconstructive modes of curation which interrogate and reveal the ways in which truths are constructed by institutions, subverting the roles of those considered holders and explicators of expert knowledge to undermine traditional views of knowledge as fixed and hierarchical (Riding, 2021).

Tensions became apparent at various stages through the life of the demonstrator, from the formation of the consortium to site selection, design and development of the technical artifacts at the core of the experiment, deployment of the devices, and discussions about potential pathways to exploitation. Some of those tensions could be negotiated, others resulted in reframings of the proposed solution or even in new perspectives about the nature of the problem to be addressed in the first place. Such perspectives were not only relevant to wireless charging for EVs but, more generally, provided opportunities to interrogate present and future forms of automobility in each site and across sites.

For example, the original framing of the project involved producing an adapter that could be installed in a variety of private cars, so that residents of participating areas could apply to have one installed to their own vehicles. The original idea was discarded while the prototypes were still in development as designing a functional adapter for one make of EV showed that adapting the kit for different makes and models would be a major undertaking. Furthermore, supply chain disruptions caused by the global Covid pandemic limited the number of devices that could be produced. Even after sourcing second-hand electronic components from salvage yards, the consortium could only secure parts to build 10 vehicle adapters instead of the 45 originally envisioned. As technology could not be developed and deployed as planned, the problem had to be redefined in response to practical challenges for the consortium. The problem, which was originally one of deploying a large number of universal adapters for wireless charging, became instead one of creating value to residents of the 3 participating areas while using a smaller number of wirelessly-charged vehicles. Thus, disruption introduced a generative tension: While the original conception of the demonstrator sought to support unchanged patterns of car use and ownership, the redefined approach encouraged shared mobility as local authorities sought to maximize utilization of each vehicle. For example, the use of wirelessly-enabled vehicles in a car club in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, resulted in a single car being used by 41 drivers.

In the examples above, the circumstances leading to disruption were not sought by the managers of the demonstrator. Disruption arose from the resistance of car manufacturers to share the technical expertise required to make more flexible adapter kits, from pandemic restrictions and from supply chain issues associated with them. Nevertheless, attention to the disruption became productive as it revealed alternative solutions, which in turn revealed new aspects of the situation. When the wireless charger was applied in a car club, the novelty was sufficient to stoke curiosity, drawing attention and mobilizing it by causing residents to change or disrupt their practices to try the new technology. The disruption resulted in some residents realizing that a car club could provide an effective replacement for a seldom-used second car, thus relieving parking pressures and encouraging more sustainable forms of travel. Although this change did not actually need wireless charging to succeed, the distraction or disruption created by the experiment was enough to prompt reflection and re-evaluation of user's own practices and stimulated the consideration of alternatives.

Theme 4: caring

Although attention to generative disruption and willingness to embrace tension were central to learning captured by the demonstrator, it must be noted that the disruption observed in OSRIC sites had little in common with the “move fast and break things” approach often associated with technological innovation, in which societal disruption and risk are accepted in the hope of future monopolistic revenue (Pfotenhauer et al., 2022). The possibility of failure is a necessary and even productive feature of urban experiments and a condition for the generation of original knowledge (Tironi, 2018), but it needs to be weighed against societal costs including for instance economic costs, opportunity costs, the risk of creating cynicism regarding the possibility of true transformation, and the risk that failed experiments will accumulate and lumber forward through “Frankenstein urbanisms” (Temenos and Lauermann, 2020; Cugurullo, 2018). The fourth analytical theme driving this paper arose from the contrast between the careless forms of disruption embraced by major technology companies and the careful and controlled disruption observed in the OSRIC demonstrator. Responsible, generative disruption is a central concern of contemporary curation (Bjerregaard, 2019; Martinon, 2013; Lind and Wood, 2010), with the literature consistently emphasizing that the word “curation” originated from the Latin term for “taking care of.” Here, sensitizing concepts from curatorial literature informed observation of the various foci of care (to things, places, publics and futures) as well as to the various forms in which care was demonstrated.

Curatorial literature conceptualizes care as a form of nurturing which goes beyond a banal form of benevolently looking after things and encompasses a care for growth and for potential nurtured through strife (Martinon, 2020). Meanwhile, in the context of urban experimentation, care has been defined as the labor needed to maintain, continue and repair the world so that we can live in it as well as possible (Tozzi, 2021). This two-pronged approach to care, incorporating disruption as well as reparation, informed the design of the demonstrator in the three sites where wireless plates were deployed. The demonstrator was disruptive as it introduced new technologies in urban spaces to encourage change away from existing practices, for example encouraging residents to rely on the shared, wirelessly-charged vehicles as an alternative to having a second car. At the same time, LAs in OSRIC sites sought to use the demonstrator to repair disrupted urban life in response to contingency. Mol (2008) has noted that logics of care can be implicit and embedded in practices, buildings, habits and machines. In the case of OSRIC, care was embedded into the demonstrator as, for example, the zero-emission vehicles provided convenient means for Redbridge residents to drive into a newly expanded Ultra Low Emission Zone in London, or as the car club provided a safer alternative to residents of Buckinghamshire avoiding public transport in the context of a global pandemic. Care by LAs was also visible as they developed strategies to manage the disruption potentially caused if the demonstrator was not successful or could not be continued. This included making funds available for removal of the charging plates at the end of the project, but also provision of alternative modes of transport to be made available in case residents became reliant on a time-bound demonstrator. Parish councilors in MK, for instance, made their acceptance of the chargers conditional on the provision of better public transport, which was then supported by LAs through the introduction of a Demand Responsive Transport system that continued operation after the end of the OSRIC demonstrator.

The examples above illustrate that such modes of caring about places and futures, as enacted in a demonstrator, are incompatible with careless modes of disruption but also reject simplistic notions of fixing the status quo to enable, for example, continued expansion of automobility. Care is an area where the shared ground of curation and urban experimentation became particularly visible. Gabauer et al. (2021) conceptualize care in cities as a form of labor, as a relational orientation toward reciprocity and as an ethical practice rooted in mutual responsibility. Responsibility, in turn, is conceptualized in terms of seeing oneself as part of a specific place, seeing its interests to be one's own, having a stake in the futures implicated in the present and the distant places implicated in the here (Massey, 2004), as well as a requirement to do something about it and engage in relational labor to make things better (Metzger, 2014). Curatorial perspectives draw attention to the acts of caring needed to sustain and even to improve urban life. Rather than seeing technical fixes as complete and finished artifacts, a caring perspective acknowledges that their inherent fragility requires them to be sustained through continuous practices, active intervention and a constant presence in the world as for things to exist “someone, somewhere must be taking care” (Puig de La Bellacasa, 2012:205, in Tozzi, 2021).

This paper drew on a curatorial perspective to address the following research question: “how is the interaction of materialities, imagination and attention managed in urban experiments, and how can it be leveraged to reveal or create more transformative urban futures?.” The core argument driving this paper is that the interaction of materiality and imagination in urban experiments is impactful, is shaped by selection and management of attention, and can be managed or rather navigated through practices with close parallels to those developed for curation as a critical and practical endeavor.

One important risk of pursuing a curatorial approach arises from the pervasiveness and even overuse of the word curation in an age in which “everyone appears to be a curator and everything appears to be in need of curation” (Tinius and Macdonald, 2020: 35), including inter alia Instagram feeds, Spotify playlists, sports shoes to look for this spring-summer and one's own wardrobe (Kathke et al., 2022). Therefore, it is important to differentiate between the lay use of the term curation as often applied in digital spaces, and the use of the term by practitioners of curation as a discipline and critical endeavor. In a lay sense increasingly applied to digital spaces, curation refers to selection in an age of material excess and information overload (Bhaskar, 2016) and to the discriminate selection of materials to display… “to carve out what is most provocative, beautiful, relevant” (Davis, 2017:771). The curatorial approach developed in this paper is not meant to encompass any and all processes of purposeful selection. The analysis at the core of this case has applied curation in a narrower, more focused sense, attending to the practices through which an idea becomes spatialized, materialized and visualized (Kathke et al., 2022). Curatorial practices of meaning-making usually associated with collections of art and historical artifacts can be translated to other domains, but to remain truly curatorial they must be relational in nature “presenting a repertory of objects, values, and subsequent narratives to an audience as a meaningful, coherent whole” (Kathke et al., 2022:75). It is through those practices that attention is drawn to specific objects so that meaning can arise from dialogues between materialities, places and publics.

The creation of meaning is central to the curatorial approach presented in this paper. Narratives and imaginaries frame experience and lead coherence to everyday life, and, conversely, counter-narratives point out to alternatives and, if found desirable and plausible, open up opportunities to question and transform the status quo (Kathke et al., 2022; Jasanoff, 2020). Such processes have been identified as central to urban experiments in various literatures (e.g., articulation and coupling of expectations in SNM, Raven, 2024) and are the central concern of literature on Sociotechnical Imaginaries (Pfotenhauer and Jasanoff, 2017; Jasanoff, 2020), but the mechanisms through which such imaginaries might be transformed or superseded remain undertheorised (Arboledas-Lérida, 2025). The present work begins to address underdeveloped aspects of the literature on socio-technical imaginaries, and particularly, the question of how particular imaginaries emerge and are collectively held (Arboledas-Lérida, 2025; Rudek, 2022). The curatorial framework developed in this contribution was used to reveal and articulate practices through which such imaginaries can be usefully developed in cities, arising from dialogues and encounters facilitated by urban experiments. The case of OSRIC suggests that actors responsible for urban spaces, such as local authorities and planners, are already oriented toward the cultivation of transformative imaginaries of place. As national or even global narratives about urban futures encounter the situated materialities and publics of cities, tensions arise and imaginaries must be adapted, contextualized or negotiated by the curators or caretakers of the city. When an innovative device was made available for potential deployment in the spaces they cared for, consideration for the material and imaginative repercussions of the deployment were anticipated, plans were made accordingly, and imaginaries were adjusted as the demonstrator revealed new aspects of place and suggested new futures and potentials.

Importantly, results suggest that the outcomes of the project could have been poorer and less transformative if attention had been narrowly centered on the technical performance of a predefined solution. Transformative futures can emerge when demonstrators are not conceptualized as showcases to develop early markets, but rather as sites of extended dialogue. In the case at the core of this article, charging points stimulated dialogue and became evocative “things to think with” (Turkle, 2011) as situated transport futures emerged in the interface between materiality and imagination. Such dialogues were possible because attention was not narrowly centered on a specific technology and its path to market, but also attended to people (resistance or acceptance of various publics and organizations), history (for example attending to the Victorian layout of a market town) materialities (for example, the cost of installing the devices and the effect on public space) symbolic aspects of the deployment (for example, how would affluent communities respond to a car club) and institutional implications, for example, regulations, ownership and responsibilities for deployments of experimental technologies in public and private spaces. As the experiment was adapted to the different trajectories, encounters and interactions in each site, OSRIC embraced multiplicity and effectively developed into three interrelated urban experiments.

The curatorial lens, when applied to the analysis of a technology demonstrator, drew attention to the value of a project that went beyond mere materialization of a predefined imaginary. The materialities of the demonstrator could have been used to broadcast a pre-defined version of the future (e.g., the one implied by the 2035 vision advocated by United Kindom government), but ultimately the project did not act as a site where technical experts taught publics about a new technology. Instead, the demonstrator used the technology to learn from publics and places and, ultimately, to interrogate and challenge existing practices. The experimental logic of OSRIC was thus aligned to contemporary curatorial approaches increasingly focused on the creation of discursive spaces with a potential to intervene in existing power relations (Milevska, 2013; Sternfeld, 2013).

The curatorial impulses demonstrated by various actors supporting the experiment appear to have generated new dialogues and revealed potentials leading to the most transformative outcomes of the wireless charging deployment. As work embracing the interaction of materiality and imagination was not specifically part of the remit of the experiment, it would have been possible, if undesirable, for such transformative potentials to be inadvertently neglected. As results suggest that deliberate attention to such interactions may enhance the future-making potential of urban experiments, we present a series of questions which may be usefully asked in an iterative fashion through the life cycle of urban experiments to encourage a curatorial orientation (See Appendix).

The questions above begin to suggest a normative direction toward urban experiments that would not prioritize technology but attend to the meanings and futures arising from situated encounters with it. Such experiments, while still producing technical knowledge relevant to the optimisation of technical solutions, would address existing calls for forms of urban experimentation better suited to adjust experiments to fit the circumstances and cultures of place rather than attempting to adjust places to fit predefined solutions (Marsden et al., 2025).

We note that the questions and prompts provided are intended as complement to rather than replacement of other existing frameworks for urban experimentation. In the case of the OSRIC project, Strategic Niche Management (Raven, 2024) provided a formal framework for some of the key decisions of the project, but what we now identify as a developing curatorial orientation encouraged a subtle shift away from problem validation and introduced problem-making logics (Tironi, 2020). As the original problem was remade or redefined it suggested new sustainable transport futures grounded in the OSRIC experiment but exceeding its original scope. This aspect of curation chimes with notions of temporary and tactical urbanism through which urban environments become novel and mutable as disruptive interventions arrest people's attention and precipitate long-term shifts in the form, management and development of urban spaces (Stevens et al., 2024). Thus, the logics of the experiment ultimately agreed with a view of curators acting as “active catalysts, generating twists, turns and tensions” (Lind and Wood, 2010:63) in order to “give the possibility for more lines of demarcation to be drawn, for the fullness of meaning to be achieved and for horizons of understanding to be set” (Martinon, 2013:30).

This research set out to investigate how urban experiments create opportunities for working in the interface of materiality and imagination, which is identified as crucial for the making of urban futures (Healey, 2004). Imagination is needed to create transformative alternatives to an unsustainable present, to go beyond improved technical efficiency in order to create better, more desirable ways of living in cities. Nonetheless, attention to places and materialities is needed as well so that imagined futures will be found plausible and visions will be actionable.

The interface between materiality and imagination has been the subject of attention to multiple literatures relevant to urban experiments, with that of Socio-technical imaginaries (Jasanoff, 2020) being perhaps the most committed to such explorations. Nonetheless, further analytical and practical work is needed to operationalise such imaginaries as objects of strategic intervention, and this paper has identified critical and practical aspects of curatorial practice that may be usefully applied to do so in the context of urban experimentation.

The technology at the core of the case, the wireless inductive chargepoint, has been a subject of considerable interest in research and policy (Ahmed et al., 2024). In this article, the device and the sites of its deployment provided an entry point to apply curation as a lens or sensitizing concept, which was further developed into an analytical framework to investigate urban experiments. Some of the actors responsible for the urban experiment, such as local authorities, were already inclined to give careful consideration to the interaction of place, materiality and imagination. Such attunements were demonstrated, for example, as they anticipated positive and negative emotions likely to arise from the different places where chargers could be deployed and from the different ways in which they would be perceived by various publics. The analysis informed by such sensitivities was presented as a case study foregrounding the latent curatorial dimension of such activities.

From an analytical perspective the unique contribution of the curatorial framework was that of providing a vocabulary to articulate work performed in the interface between materialities, places, publics and meanings. Importantly, curatorial approaches create meaning relationally through dialogues and encounters, while drawing tensions to the surface as catalysts to challenge pre-conceived understandings of the situation. Strategic interventions upon said interface were therefore crucial to the joint creation of inclusive and transformative futures in the locations where wireless chargers were demonstrated.

As a curatorial analytical lens was applied to multi-sited deployment of wireless charging points, findings from this research challenged a conception of urban experiments as sites for fixing or optimizing technologies, for building markets for them, and ultimately for broadcasting preconceived images of specific urban futures. Rather, the intended solution revealed new aspects of the problem it was meant to address. Ultimately, the success of the experiment was not in developing an improved solution but in re-structuring the original problem. Urban experiments were revealed as sites where, as urban futures are negotiated and mobilized (Sierhuis et al., 2024; Caprotti and Cowley, 2017), the possibility of imagining otherwise was foregrounded. Such an approach was not found to be at odds with the practical aspects of urban experiments, such as the need to improve technologies, to learn about business models, to secure traffic restriction orders, gain approval for new power sub-stations and engage in all the very material business of running an experiment. In fact, the mundane nature of such endeavors contributed to the plausibility of the new futures suggested by them.

Planned encounters with a surprising device deployed in a mundane on-street setting provided experiment organizers with distance from the existing state of affairs. The introduction of a new and surprising technology provided opportunities to make the familiar unfamiliar again, disrupting the taken for granted and making it possible to experience an alternative configuration of places, practices, wants and needs. Although the wireless future originally envisioned was not as desirable as expected, staged encounters anticipating a possible future provided opportunities to judge what we are doing in the light of what we could or should do (Gorz, 1999). At the same time, the materiality of the experiment grounded the imaginative dimension of the experiment, thus contributing to its future-making potential. In the case of OSRIC, wireless chargers were lively objects (Muller and Langill, 2021) which resisted some approaches and suggested others. Thus, even when the new futures did not actively feature wireless technologies, the chargers were nonetheless useful as evocative things to think with (Turkle, 2011).

Despite the insights produced by this case, its limitations must be acknowledged and addressed in future research. The 25 interviews and 33 surveys collected over a period of 29 months are suitable for drawing conclusions regarding an experiment that ultimately recruited 41 users, but the transferability of results of the study will be limited without further research. Although the experiment was deployed in three different locations under the responsibility of unrelated local authorities, with significantly different socioeconomic and geographical characteristics, nevertheless all the sites were located in the South of England. Furthermore, many of the practices identified as curatorial were not planned or standardized in any way but were emergent responses to contingencies such as disruptions caused by one-off events such as the global pandemic or the expansion of the Ultra-Low Emission Zone. Consequently, the generalisability of the findings remains in question and further research will be needed to investigate which aspects of what may be called “curatorial experimentation” are inherent to all urban experiments and which ones were contingent on the spatial, temporal and institutional context of the OSRIC experiment. Finally and importantly, long term research will be needed to investigate how the transformative potentials introduced by the experiment were ultimately materialized, reframed, superseded or perhaps ignored. This case has suggested that curatorial experiments have considerable capacity to surface tensions and reshape problem framings. However, as the resulting potentials may be incompatible with those envisioned by dominant actors in government and industry, the curatorial interest in developing counternarratives to resist and intervene in existing power relations may be put to test, and may be key to materializing and nurturing truly transformative urban futures.