Abstract Canadian Urban Living Labs (ULLs) are often created organically, forming diverse and distinct local models, networks, and methods of urban experimentation across the country. Although often labeled differently, many of these collaborative experimentations share the same characteristics with ULLs. The research question for this paper is: How is the diversity of the collaborative urban experimentations (ULLs) that focus on urban environmental sustainability in major Canadian cities and what are the main trends in the urban lab ecosystem? We investigate this question by studying 20 ULLs in a qualitative case study research from four major cities of Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montréal. By conducting semi-structured interviews with the key informants of the labs as well as desk research from publicly available data on these organizations or labs, this research first provides a general evaluation of the current labs’ ecosystem in Canada that focus on urban environmental sustainability by using SWOT analysis. Next, it demonstrates that the model and structure of these labs can be categorized in 4 main groups and 8 sub-categories using various qualitative data. The research also suggests considering the categorization of these labs based on their key methodological and theoretical drivers (4 groups) and the main types of outcomes in organizations and labs (4 groups). Finally, we provide visualizations that illustrate these categorizations to identify the key trends and patterns in this variety