This chapter situates an urban policy laboratory within Thailand’s local policy style, where centrally issued rules, detailed guidelines, and audit logics dominate practice, and where expert and elite framings shape what counts as a policy problem and a legitimate solution. Hierarchical social norms reinforce power asymmetries and a compliance mindset that privileges doing what is prescribed and avoiding steps not explicitly authorised, rather than asking what should be done in response to local contexts and challenges. Within this environment, locally driven policy innovation is rare. The Lab was created as a space of possibilities that convenes municipalities, civil society, universities, innovators, and laypeople to co-create and trial solutions in municipal sandboxes and to learn collectively from results. Grounded in an empathetic policy process, it centres hopes, fears, and lived experience and widens participation beyond experts and elites. Positioned as a city-wide enabling platform, the Lab links civic innovation to formal decision-making and seeks institutional adoption amid hierarchy, uncertainty, and political transition.