ABSTRACT
Experiments have already attracted significant attention in the urban context as strategic interventions and governance tools. Applied to issues such as climate change and social inequality, particularly in areas like infrastructure, transport and energy, they provide a distinctive governance approach amongst local governments, the private sector and civil society. By exploring a number of its daily practices and ongoing projects, it shows the formation of the garden's experimentality and its resulting relevance as both an alternative space of learning and an emergent material intervention in urban policy discussion. Experimentation fits into this performative, socio-material approach as one possible avenue of urban learning. When implemented within the existing frameworks of urban policy-making, experiments are likely to replicate a number of mostly neoliberal assumptions and structures that are rarely acknowledged. The Prinzessinnengarten is based on volunteer participation, ranging from one-off contributions to regulars who take on particular areas of responsibility in the garden, with only a few permanent paid roles.
