The Fab City Global Initiative is organising the Fab City Summit in collaboration with the City Hall of Paris and the Fab City Grand Paris Association, and it will take place between Wednesday 11 July and Friday 13 July this year. The extensive program takes place at the Parc de la Villette in Paris. An invitation-only event for City Officials and Representatives from the Fab City network will open the conference on the 11th, presented by Anne Hidalgo (Mayor of the City of Paris) in their capacity as European Capital of Innovation Awardees 2017, and Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation.

The Fab City Lab will be followed by two days of high-profile international speakers at the Fab City conference. This ticketed event includes keynote and conversations with speakers such as Dave Hakkens (Dutch industrial designer and founder of circular economy community Precious Plastic, Neil Gershenfeld (MIT Centre for Bits and Atoms); Saskia Sassen (Professor of Sociology at Columbia University who coined the Global City). A special week-long campus will follow, open to the public from Saturday 14 July and will provide an exciting way for everyone to experience life in a Fab City, with family-friendly hands-on activities, bike tours and fun.

The Paris summit will welcome new cities to the Fab City network, from as far as New Zealand and Brazil. City leaders have identified the network as an invaluable tool for sharing best-practice and concrete experiences in how cities can transition to a future which empowers citizens and ensures productivity and sustainability.

Fab City: A global collaboration project between innovation ecosystems, governments and industry that is enabling the transition to more sustainable and productive cities during the next 36 years. Started in Barcelona in 2014, Fab City stands for human values in the age of technology, and fosters actions and experiments that allow to build new urban futures based on the relocalisation of the production of food, energy and products, and global collaboration. Fab City has been initiated by the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, the City Council of Barcelona and the Fab Foundation; it operates within the over 1300 strong Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Labs) global network, using it as a distributed infrastructure for innovation and knowledge source to enable the technology needed for cities to produce everything they consume by 2054. As of 2017, 18 cities are part of the global Fab City network: Barcelona, Boston, Somerville, Cambridge, Ekurhuleni, Kerala, Georgia, Shenzhen, Amsterdam, Toulouse, Occitanie Region, Paris, Bhutan, Sacramento, Santiago De Chile, Detroit, Brest, Curitiba.

Join https://summit.fabcity.paris/tickets/

Media Contact: [email protected]

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Abstract

Critical approaches to the smart city concept are used to begin highlighting the promises of makerspaces, that is to say, those emerging urban sites that promote sharing practices; exercise community-based forms of governance; and utilize local manufacturing technologies. A bird’s-eye-view of the history of makerspaces is provided tracing their roots back to the hacker movement. Drawing from secondary sources, their community-building, learning and innovation potential is briefly discussed. Makerspaces, this essay argues, can serve as hubs and vehicles for citizen-driven transformation and, thus, play a key part in a more inclusive, participatory and commons-oriented vision of the smart city.

Excerpts

Introduction

Urbanization is a trend of our times, with the largest share of the human population globally living in cities; a trend that is only increasing. Cities are economic centers that through the consumption of massive resources lead to heavy environmental impact as well as to social contestations and conflicts. This creates the need for new conceptualizations for a city that will be able to deal with the current issues in more imaginative, inclusive and sustainable ways.

In this paper, critical approaches to the smart city concept are used to begin highlighting the promises of emerging urban sites that promote sharing practices and commons-based peer production.

In light of the rise of the collaborative commons, i.e., shared resources, the concept of urban “makerspaces” is discussed. The latter are community-led, open spaces where individuals share resources and meet on a regular basis to collaboratively engage in creative commons-oriented projects, usually utilizing open source software and hardware technologies. Through the intersection of digital technologies and urban life, several initiatives have emerged that attempt to circumvent the dependence on private firms or governments to provide solutions.

What is the community-building, learning and innovation potential of makerspaces towards a more inclusive, commons-oriented smart city?

Community-building potential

Makerspaces can be viewed as community-run hubs that connect citizens not only of the same city but also of other cities worldwide. Approximately 66% of the UK-based makerspaces collaborate with other UK-based or foreign makerspaces on a regular basis, while 46% contribute to commons-oriented, open source projects which normally have a global orientation. Yet, individuals are more engaged and committed to one local makerspace. Further, two of the top reasons people use makerspaces are socializing and learning. Hence, makerspaces can be platforms that cultivate relationships and networks, building social capital, i.e., “social networks and the attendant norms of trust and reciprocity”.

However, claims around the potentialities of makerspaces are still speculative and depend on how individuals associate with such places. While makerspaces have been built in ethnically and geographically diverse environments, there is yet a lack of racial and gender diversity within many of them. For instance, membership is predominantly male in 80% of UK makerspaces and 77% of China’s makers are male. Additionally, 81% of U.S. makers are male with an average income of $106,000. These are indications that participation in the maker movement is heavily dominated by affluent men.

As an attempt to correct this lack of diversity, some feminist and people of color-led makerspaces have emerged, such as Mz Baltazar’s Laboratory in Vienna and Mothership Hackermoms in Berkley (feminist spaces created in 2008 and 2012 respectively) or Liberating Ourselves Locally in Oakland (a “people of color-led” space created in 2012). However, such strategies have been met with controversy, since they are deemed to go against the principle of openness.

Learning potential

The learning potential of making coupled with open learning environments; project-based learning; informal tinkering; and peer collaboration can motivate the social learning and personalized involvement of participants. Makerspaces exhibit the aforementioned characteristics and, thus, show great promise as emerging learning hubs. That is why makerspaces have recently generated much interest in diverse educational circles. For example, several libraries and museums have created spaces with the aim to empower creative activity, resource-sharing, and active engagement with making, materials, processes, and ideas in relation to their collections and exhibits.

It appears that makerspaces offer the capacity for informal community activity as well as a proper learning environment with a focus on productive processes rather than skill-set building. Varying activities may be combined (like programming and hardware building and even manufacturing tools development), following the approach of constructionism.

Nevertheless, inclusivity and participation in such educational activities is not assured. Although more than 50% of UK makerspaces offer support, courses and tool inductions, the majority of makers are well-educated and technologically-confident. Likewise, 97% of makers in the U.S. have attended or graduated from college, while 80% say they have post-graduate education. Thus, to facilitate learning for diverse users, makerspaces should be staffed by qualified educators who are knowledgeable about theories of teaching and learning as well as about user needs and behaviors.

Innovation potential

In makerspaces people innovate and learn together by making things and using the Web to globally connect and share designs, tutorials and code. They offer creative environments where sustainable entrepreneurs, potentially with diverse motives and backgrounds, can meet and interact and thus benefit from synergies and the cross-pollination of ideas. Moreover, in makerspaces designers can come together and collaborate in participatory explorations during the use phase by prototyping, adding small-scale interventions and, therefore, moving from a “design-in-the-studio” to a “design-in-use” strategy.

Several innovative entrepreneurial endeavors and start-ups have emerged through makerspaces. This article refers to some prominent cases with the aim to provide an overview of the most mature examples that cover a wide spectrum of areas, from ICT and local manufacturing technologies to farming, culture and neuroscience.

In all, makerspaces should not be viewed merely as experimentation sites with local manufacturing technologies but as places “where people are experimenting with new ideas about the relationships amongst corporations, designers, and consumers”. The review of makerspaces-related innovation illustrated that they mainly produce user-led, incremental product and process innovations. Some of the aforementioned projects and eco-systems, such as the RepRap- or Arduino-based eco-systems, may represent both the Schumpeterian and social-oriented understanding of innovation. They seem to create win-win situations for both instigators/entrepreneurs and society, and inaugurate commons-oriented business models which arguably go beyond the classical corporate paradigm and its extractive profit-maximizing practices.

Conclusions

Are makerspaces a manifestation of the “new spirit of capitalism” that has successfully incorporated and adapted several of its various critical cultures? Or could we consider makerspaces as sites with non-negligible post-capitalist dynamics? Both possibilities still exist.

If we subscribe to the idea that at least some makerspaces can be seen as CBPP in practice, then, makerspaces may belong to a new form of capitalism but, at the same time, also highlight ways in which this new form might be transcended. If the dominant discourse of the “smart city” project is aligned with a neoliberal, corporate vision for urban development, then the “makerspace” could simultaneously be a source of legitimacy for the project and also serve as an institution for citizen-driven transformation.

An alternative vision for the smart city may be possible through a commons-oriented approach, geared towards the democratization of means of production. The basic tenet of this approach encourages citizens to participate in creating solutions collectively instead of merely adopting proprietary technology. In addition to virtual connections observed in several sharing economy initiatives, makerspaces can be the physical nodes of a collaborative culture. Further, they can serve as a new “design template”, where knowledge/design is developed and shared as a global digital commons while the actual customized manufacturing takes place locally, thus initiating a decisive break from the current production model.

Full title: “Making (in) the Smart City: The Emergence of Makerspaces”.

Originally published at Telematics & Informatics.

Find this and more articles here.

Photo by olabimakerspace

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As we have painfully learned from the previous industrial and digital revolutions, technology is not entirely value-neutral, meaning neither good nor bad. Under the social and economic system of capitalism, most technological innovation has been driven by the desire to maximize profits, reduce space/time limitations (i.e. how long it takes to make and deliver a commodity or service), and eliminate labor costs. So, while it is true that the technology does not determine its own use (not yet anyway), its application and value have largely been determined by a small subset of humanity. We want to make sure that we change this equation with the Third Digital Revolution. How we structure the ownership, control, and use of the technologies of the Third Digital Revolution will either aid humanity in our collective quest for liberation, or deepen still our species’ inhumanity towards itself and our dear mother earth. One thing is painfully clear, and that is if these technologies remain the exclusive property of the capitalist class and the transnational corporations they control, these tools will not be used for the benefit of the overwhelming majority of humanity, but to expand the profits and further consolidate the power of the 1% that rule the world. Under their control, these technologies will lead to a crisis of global unemployment on a scale unseen in human history. The end result will be a global dystopia, a social nightmare predicated on massive poverty, lawlessness, state repression, and ever greater human disposability rather than the potential utopia these technologies could potentially enable.

Confronting the Challenges: Class, Race, Gender, and Ecological Limitations

GYASI WILLIAMS (LEFT) AND AMALYA LIVINGSTON OF THE COMMUNITY PRODUCTION INITIATIVE.

In order to make the future that we want, we have to openly confront the stark problems already at the heart of the Third Digital Revolution, and there are several glaring problems already in plain sight. Despite great efforts toward democratizing the Third Digital Revolution by making much of the technology “open source”, historically oppressed and disenfranchised communities remain excluded. The same access gulf seen in the current “digital divide” is being replicated and deepened. Instead of a ubiquitous transformation, with equal access and distribution, what in fact is emerging is a “fabrication divide”.

This divide is layered, multi-dimensional, and compounded. The first and obvious barrier to access is cost. Those who can afford the machines will eventually be able to produce whatever they want, while those who can’t will remain dependent on the inequitable market, the forces that manipulate it, and the increasingly antiquated methods of production they employ to produce their consumer goods. While this revolution is spurred on by the dropping cost and rapid development of fabrication technology, indigenous and working-class Black and Latin-x populations will still find themselves at least a step behind as the cost of early adoption will continue to advantage the already privileged.

The issues of cost and accessibility lead directly to a discussion of class. The working class is almost always alienated from the market mechanisms that enable people to take the best advantage of emerging technology. Further still, the dismantling of society by the neoliberal project has eroded the bonds of social solidarity and eradicated the safety nets created through working-class political victories. The emergence of the Third Digital Revolution within this socio-political context will only widen the inequality and access gaps that already exist. For example, the recent elimination of net neutrality combined with years of starving public schools of funding and eviscerating city services ensures that libraries and any other public services that once helped to counterbalance the technological gaps experienced by the working class during the latter half of the 20th century are becoming ineffective or altogether nonexistent.

While there has been a great deal of public discussion about the advance of the Third Digital Revolution and what benefits and threats it potentially poses, there has been little discussion about racial inequity within the Third Digital Revolution. Without a major structural intervention, the Third Digital Revolution will only exacerbate the existing digital divide. Again, here the problem is layered and compounded, for the advances in automation and artificial intelligence that the Third Digital Revolution will advance will disproportionately eliminate many of the low-skill, low-wage manual labor and service sector jobs that historically oppressed communities have been forced into over the last several years. Given some projections of massive job loss due to automation, there is a real question about whether the potential benefits this transformation could have will outweigh the severe pain and loss Indigenous, Black and Latinx working-class populations will face as this technology advances.

Even less discussed than the class and race-based impacts of the Third Digital Revolution are the gender disparities that are likely to deepen if there is no major intervention in the social advance of this development. Despite recent advances, it is no secret that women are grossly under-represented in the technological and scientific arenas[2]. The question is, how can and will the gender inequities be addressed in the midst of the social transformations stimulated by the Third Digital Revolution? Will the existing gender distribution patterns remain, be exasperated, or will they be eliminated?

The Third Digital Revolution, like its predecessors, will undoubtedly make fundamental shifts not only to human society but to the planet as well, many of which have yet to be anticipated. One likely shift that must be examined is the potential of accelerated environmental catastrophe. Currently, 3D printing is all the rage, and for good reason. It inspires the imagination and hints at a future where we are able to download or create a file that will allow us to fabricate just about anything that we can imagine. The key question that hasn’t been asked is how will humanity manage personal fabrication on a mass scale? The earth’s resources are finite. Nevertheless, capitalism has ingrained in us an infinite desire for commodities. While the methods of production under capitalism have been horrifically destructive to the environment, there is no guarantee that the appetites that have been programmed into us over the last several hundred years will suddenly accommodate themselves to ecological balance and sustainability if we are suddenly given the ability to fabricate what we want in the privacy of our own homes. There is a great deal of consciousness-raising and re-socialization about our ecological limits and responsibilities, accompanied by major policy shifts, that must be done to prevent the resource depletion and massive fabrication waste that is likely to result from this technology becoming broadly adopted.

All of these challenging facets of the coming Third Digital Revolution must be addressed, and quickly. The Third Digital Revolution is emerging in a society with immense inequality and imbalance with regard to the integration of existing technology from the previous Industrial and Digital Revolutions. As these historic developments converge into the Third Digital Revolution, the concern is that not only will this inherited inequity continue but will be drastically deepened for all of the reasons listed above. Those of us seeking to realize the potential of the Third Digital Revolution to help our species realize its full potential, must create the means to combat this deepening inequity, and democratize this transformation. If we can do that, we may very well be able to lay the foundation for a democratic and regenerative economic order, one that could potentially eliminate the extractive, exploitative, and utterly oppressive and undemocratic system that we are currently subjected to.

Those who seek to assist in democratizing the technology of the Third Digital Revolution must understand that any initial investment at this time is risky. The road ahead is not clear. What we do know is that we cannot afford to leave the development of this technological revolution solely up to actors like Amazon, Google, Walmart, or the US Department of Defense. In their hands, it will only serve to further extract profits from the majority of humanity and maintain the imperial dominance of the US government through force of arms. However, finding capital players willing to make “non-extractive” investments that center on tech justice, cooperative business innovation, and production driven to fulfill human need over profit realization are hard to find. There are many organizations experimenting with getting this technology out to vulnerable populations to aid us from falling further behind the technological access gap, but none of us really know what will work initially, nor when the technology will be at a significantly advanced stage to truly replace the existing mode of production. The stakes are high, as are the risks at this stage. Nevertheless, we must struggle, as all early adopters should, to not only avoid being left out in the cold but to help guide the development in a democratic and egalitarian manner.

Creating the Future, Taking Risks, Co-Constructing Solutions

Early adopter risk-taking is exactly what Cooperation Jackson is embarking upon with the launch of our Community Production Center and Community Production Cooperative[3]. Our aim is to make Jackson, Mississippi the “city of the future”, a Transition City anchored in part in the practices of a “Fab City”[4] that would transform our city into an international center of advanced, sustainable manufacturing utilizing 3D printing and other innovative tools of the Third Digital Revolution. The only way we are going to come anywhere close to attaining anything like the utopia these technologies promise is by democratizing them and subjecting them to social use and production for the benefit of all, rather than the control and appropriation by the few.

The democratization of the technologies of the Third Digital Revolution, both in their ownership and use, is one of the primary aims of Cooperation Jackson. To realize this aim we struggle for Tech Democracy[5] and Tech Justice first and foremost by educating our members and the general public about the promises and perils of the technology so that people can make informed decisions. We suggest this as a general framework of struggle. The next course of action we suggest is the pursuit of self-finance to acquire as much of this technology as we can, with the explicit intention of controlling these means of production and utilizing them for the direct benefit of our organization and our community.

Another course of action we suggest and are embarking upon is organizing our community for political and economic power to expand and reinforce our Community Production efforts. Our aim is to gradually make Community Production ubiquitous in our community, with the explicit intent of gradually replacing the exploitative and environmentally destructive methods of production in use at present. A related course of action is to utilize our political power to make demands on the government, the capitalist class, and the transnational corporations to remove the controls they have on the technology, like exclusive patents, in order to make these technologies publicly accessible. Another essential demand on the government is to make massive investments in these technologies to make them public utilities and/or commons[6]and to ensure that the corporations make restorative investments in these utilities for the public good.

We also think that public/community partnerships should be pursued on a municipal level to establish direct community ownership over these technologies to help ensure that vulnerable populations and historically oppressed communities gain direct access, with the prerequisite being where these communities are sufficiently organized and possess a degree of political power within the municipality. Public/community partnerships could also be essential towards capitalizing these democratic pursuits, by enabling the community to use both its tax wealth and various vehicles of self-finance to build out the necessary infrastructure in a manner that will ensure that it remains in the community commons or public domain. It is essential that these types of pursuits be public/community partnerships, with the community being organized in collective institutions like cooperatives, credit unions, community development corporations, etc., and not your typical public/private partnerships that will only remove this infrastructure from the commons or public domain as soon as possible in our neoliberal dominated world.

Further, given the steady decline in union membership, density, and overall social and political power, coupled with the ever-growing threats of automation, mechanization, big data, and artificial intelligence to the working class as a whole, we want to appeal to the various unions, in and out of the AFL-CIO, as the most organized sector of the working class in the US, to take the challenges of the Third Digital Revolution head on. In fact, we think organized labor should be leading the charge on the question of Community Production, as it is in the best position given its resources, skills and strategic location in society to steer the Third Digital Revolution in a democratic manner. In this vein, we want to encourage organized labor to utilize the tremendous investment resources it has at its disposal to start creating or investing in Community Production Cooperatives throughout the US to further the ubiquitous development and utilization of the technology to help us all realize the benefits of a “zero-marginal-cost society”[7] to combat climate change and eliminate the exploitation of the working class and the lingering social and material effects of racism, patriarchy, heterosexism, ableism, etc. It is time for the cooperative and union movements, as vehicles of working-class self-organization, to reunite again, and Community Production units could and should be a strategic means towards this end.

Finally, we have to keep pushing forward-thinking universities, particularly public colleges and universities, and philanthropists to also provide support to community production development efforts seeking to democratize control of this technology early on.

These are the core elements of what we think is a transformative program to utilize and participate in the development of the Third Digital Revolution for the benefit of our community and the liberation of the working class and all of humanity. We want and encourage other historically oppressed communities throughout the United States to follow this path, Jackson cannot and should not follow this path alone.

Supporting Cooperation Jackson and the Center for Community Production

If you agree with this analysis, in whole or in part, we need your help to bridge the Fabrication Divide. Cooperation Jackson is seeking broad public support for the development of our Community Production Center. We are aiming to raise $600,000 to complete the purchase of the facilities, build out them out, and equip them with all the utilities and equipment needed to create a dynamic Production Center. You can help build the Center for Community Production by becoming a National Donor or Investor and recruiting others to do the same. The $600,000 figure does not have to be daunting, if we can recruit 600 people to donate and/or invest $1,000 each, we can easily meet this goal. So, let us not be swayed, but moved to organize to turn this vision into a transformative reality.

[1] We draw our primary definition of the Third Digital Revolution from the work of Neil Gershenfeld, particularly his more recent work “Designing Reality: How to Survive and Thrive in the Third Digital Revolution”, co-written with Alan Gershenfeld and Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld.

[2] For more detail on the gender gap in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields see, “Women still underrepresented in the STEM Fields”, https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/10/21/women-still-underrepresented-in-stem-fields.

[3] We derive our notion of Community Production from Blair Evans and INCITE FOCUS based in Detroit, Michigan. For more information see INCITE FOCUS https://www.incite-focus.org/ and “Green City Diaries: Fab Lab and the Language of Nature” http://www.modeldmedia.com/features/greencity1113.aspx.

[4] Fab City is a concept that grew out of the Fab Lab Network. For more information on this concept and emerging network see http://fab.city/about/.

[5] We are adopting the concept of Tech Justice from LabGov, which describes itself as the “laboratory for the governance of the city as a commons”. For more information see http://www.labgov.it/.

[6] We utilize the notion and definition of the Commons utilized within the Peer 2 Peer Network. For more details see “What it the Commons Transition?” at https://primer.commonstransition.org/1-short-articles/1-1-what-is-a-commons-transition.

[7] We have adopted the notion of a “Zero-Marginal Cost Society” from Jeremy Rifkin and his work, “The Zero-Marginal Cost Society: the Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism”.

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Labor productivity has never been greater but the rewards from this are not being evenly distributed. In fact, artificial intelligence, robotics, and smart devices are wreaking havoc on labor markets and generating growing calls for basic income to help avert even worse income inequality in the coming years. Aside from rampant inequalities, we seem to be stuck in making real progress on climate change and losses of biodiversity. In short, many of us have begun to question whether market-based capitalism as we know it is capable of improving conditions for planet and people.

Throughout the past several years I have been conducting research on a range of sustainable entrepreneurial initiatives around the globe, interviewing hundreds of inspiring entrepreneurs along the way. What I have come to realize is that there is a new wave of entrepreneurial organizing around the world, oriented toward making things better for the 99 percent. Yet much of this organizing does not fit the mold of traditional, capitalist approaches to startups, venture finance, growth and exit.

In my latest book, I refer to this phenomenon as post-capitalist entrepreneurship. For me it is something more than just entrepreneurship that also seeks to balance social and/or ecological impacts. Post-capitalist entrepreneurship (PCE) instead is about changing the underlying logic of entrepreneurial organizing, governance models, legal structures, approach to intellectual property, perception of consumption and production and of course the ultimate objectives and metrics of success.

In my view there is somewhat of a continuum of PCE from those closest to our current understanding of market-based entrepreneurship to more extreme versions of PCE:

For-benefit (B Corps)

On the surface, B Corps may seem like mere representations of responsible market-based entrepreneurship. After all, the majority of B Corps are for-profit enterprises, frequently with board of directors, closed, intellectual property models, private ownership and often receive traditional investment from angels and venture capitalists. Some B Corps are even publicly traded on traditional stock exchanges (e.g. Etsy, Natura). What makes B Corps the starting point for PCE is that they are legally bound to embrace social and ecological concerns. If “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits” as the famed economist, Milton Friedman wrote in Capitalism and Freedom, then companies who legally bound themselves to something beyond profits, as B Corps do, are something different than what we think market-based enterprises are about.

Platform Cooperatives

The media has offered plenty of coverage of the platform capitalist business models like Uber, Airbnb and Task Rabbit. Yet, what has been underexplored so far is the emergence of alternative models of sharing economy platforms which embrace ideas like the commons and cooperative governance. The platform cooperative movement is picking up steam with support from the Platform Cooperative Consortium, as well as a growing number of innovators embracing the Occupy Movement´s values, but leveraging technology to turn their activism into collective entrepreneurial action.

Peer Production and Consumption

While most of the sharing economy, including platform cooperatives, are primarily oriented towards recirculated goods and skills in society more efficiently, there is something potentially even more impactful happening mostly in cities around the globe. The maker movement is picking up steam around the globe, supported by the 1100 Fab Labs, platforms like Etsy which connect makers with distributed customers seeking unique, instead of mass-produced products made in China, and numerous other democratized technologies making innovation more affordable for the 99 percent.

Loic Le Goueff, a 27-year-old Swiss national agrarian, and his partner launched a startup called Aquapioneers. Through access to Barcelona’s Green Fab Lab, the pair had managed to design and build a closed loop aquaponics device which can be used by homeowners and renters to produce their own vegetables at their homes with minimum investment and low operating costs. What makes Aquapioneers so interesting is that they have committed to the maker community and to open source hardware. In fact, they are making their design freely available for downloading and printing at the more than 1,100 Fab Labs around the world.

The Fab City initiative encourages member cities to commit to producing at least 50 percent of everything consumed in the city by 2054. More than a dozen cities around the world including Amsterdam, Barcelona, Boston, Detroit and Santiago, Chile, have already made the ambitious commitment. To achieve these goals cities such as Barcelona have been supporting a grassroots maker movement of producers and consumers for everything from energy and housing to furniture and food. Sometimes cash changes hands while in others, alternative currencies, even local, social, cryptocurrencies are being used to encourage value exchange.

Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAOs)

Still mostly a dream, the idea behind DAOs is that you could have platforms connecting users for exchange without an intermediary monetizing the transactions. Think Uber without Uber in the middle, Airbnb without Airbnb. DAOs would be blockchain-enabled platforms facilitating exchange through smart contracts and distributed ledgers but no ownership of the platform. Essentially DAOs are like open source software supported by developers around the globe designed to take out the platform capitalist intermediaries and their venture capitalists. One of the most advanced experiments in the DAO space is OpenBazaar which essentially aims to be like eBay without eBay.

Conclusion

I am not so naïve as to suggest that capitalism is dead or perhaps that it could die anytime soon. Instead, what I am saying, is that capitalism, and the short-termism that frequently emerges, does not appear to be capable of addressing the world´s most pressing problems. But rather than just protest in the street like the Occupy Movement did, we are starting to witness a new, collective movement of entrepreneurs and citizens aiming to take matters into their own hands by creating new organizational models (or remaking old ones like the platform cooperativism movement) to challenge the status quo and to create a new kind of economy, one that it is frequently more local but at the same time interconnected globally. Can the post-capitalist entrepreneurship movement operate in parallel with, and successfully compete against venture capital-backed and publicly-traded traditional enterprises? Will the PCE movement help us create a more circular, sustainable and just economy in time to avert even worse crises of inequality and climate change? I do not have clear answers to these questions, but I prefer to be optimistic about their chances. How about you?

Originally published in Triple Pundit.

Photo by kvanhorn

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This is a press release by Space10, our partners in organising the Made Again Challenge in Poblenou — Barcelona during the summer in 2016. We brought IKEA designers, local and international makers, to prototype in 5 days how we could redesign material flows at the neighbourhood scale. This project has been the spark of a larger collaboration going on between the partners.

An astonishing transformation is taking place in Barcelona’s former industrial district of Poblenou. The district was once rundown, just like so many other former industrial neighbourhoods in Western cities once manufacturing moved overseas. Today the neighbourhood has become a poster child for urban renewal through a bottom-up approach, creating an epicentre of technology and creativity — leading the Catalan paper Publico and other media to describe it as a mini Silicon Valley for sustainable industry.

The neighbourhood is spearheading a new urban model of resiliency and local innovation, where citizens are perceived not just as consumers but as producers, empowered through access to digital fabrication tools, and knowledge. Poblenou is today an experimentation playground to build the vision of how we might step away from importing most things into the city and export our waste, and instead introduce a circular model, where all resources flow in a closed-loop system within the city itself.

Former NODO maker space, now being turned into a co-working space. Photo: Space10

In fact, Poblenou is already building the infrastructure to be locally productive and globally connected, in order to produce at least half of what it consumes by 2054, using materials that are sourced locally or reclaimed from waste creating a partly circular model, where waste is remade into new products.

The largest Fab City prototype to date

Last summer, the ambitious vision behind the so-called Fab City movement was tested in reality during the Made Again Challenge, a project initiated by SPACE10 — IKEA’s “external future-living lab” — and the Fab City Research Laboratory. Together they created the first and largest Fab City prototype to date in Poblenou — a one-square-kilometre testbed to explore how to rethink and re-engineer our production system in cities.

Poblenou Maker district — Building the Fab City vision in Barcelona at the local scale. Image: Fab City Research Lab at IAAC

Over the course of five days, local workshops, research centers, design agencies and local producers in the neighbourhood was connected into an ecosystem. Biologists, tech professionals, local makers, craftsmen, IKEA designers, and other trailblazers gathered in Barcelona for the project and collected wasted products from the streets of Poblenou in order to breath new life into materials that were heading to landfill.

In Barcelona, each neighbourhood has the “dia de los trastos”, a week day in which large scale trash is taken out to the streets in order to be collected by a public service. Trash mafias and individuals fight for collection of these resources as materials and new furniture. Photo: Space10

The whole experiment is captured in this seven-minute-long documentary.

The Made Again Challenge led to both the mayor of Barcelona and Barcelona City Council to announce support for turning Poblenou into a “Maker District”, part of the ambitious city Digital Plan.

Visit of Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, Vice-Mayor Gerardo Pisarello, Counsellor Gala Pin and CTO Francesca Bria to Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC, hosted by Director Tomas Diez and President of the Board Oriol Soler. Photo: Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC

According to Gerardo Pisarello, Barcelona’s first deputy mayor:

“We want an economy that’s based on re-industrialization 4.0, an economy rooted in the territory, giving opportunities to new manufacturing linked to new technologies, and that has the participation of the people and neighbourhoods, such as Poblenou.”

The neighborhood has become a significant source of inspiration to other cities, regions and countries that have already pledged to the idea of the Fab City and to become self-sufficient by 2054 — including Amsterdam, Boston, Bhutan, Detroit, Georgia, Paris, Shenzhen, and Toulouse. Many other cities are looking at the Fab City movement for inspiration — and in September, Copenhagen will host this year’s official Fab City Global Summit (followed in 2018 by Paris).

Fab City Documentary at FAB10 Barcelona, 2014.

Interested?

If you find the story interesting, you are more than welcome to contact Tomas Diez, who is director of Fab Lab Barcelona and IAAC, and heading the Fab City Research Lab and was part of organising the Made Again Challenge:

[email protected]

Fab City whitepaper: http://fab.city/whitepaper.pdf

Poblenou is also hosting one of the biggest urban experiments in the form of Super Blocks: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/may/17/superblocks-rescue-barcelona-spain-plan-give-streets-back-residents

About the author:  Tomas Diez, making stuff at Fab Lab Barcelona – IAAC. Smart Citizen and Studio P52 co-founder. Urbanist and technologist.

The post Made Again Documentary — The ‘Silicon Valley of sustainability’ in Barcelona appeared first on P2P Foundation.

“The proposal did not get through the second phase due to the ‘lack of impact and concretion’. We believe that this project needs to happen, and we will make it happen.

Introduction:

There is a pressing need to reimagine cities and how they operate in order to respond to the ecological and social challenges of our time. Cities hold the potential for the reinvention of the current linear economy paradigm to a Circular Economy, and the Fab City Prototypes project aims to accelerate this paradigm change, allowing consumers to become actors of the design, prototyping and production processes at the local scale, while sharing knowledge globally. We build on the premise that individual change is essential to catalyse a collective transition towards more sustainable lifestyles. In this regard, citizens need to engage in self-transformation — which can be enabled through new product cultures and new cultures of design and production. The immediate outcome of the project will establish the necessary urban frameworks and lighthouses to guide policy makers to scale the results to metropolitan and bioregional levels. This will be fostered by partnerships with industry and local authorities. Linking micro-enterprise and citizen-led spaces with corporate and government sectors will create an ideal test ground to develop and implement approaches for an inclusive and impactful Circular Economy. The ambition is to pave the way for locally productive and globally connected cities, that foster social cohesion and well-being.

1.1 Objectives

The main objective of the Fab City Prototypes project is to set up a European experimentation playground — on- and offline — to implement, test and iterate innovative business opportunities at the local scale in cities’ neighbourhoods, and create open markets for products and services that support the development of Circular Economy. The project will consolidate a global knowledge network that shares tools and best practices for the construction of new productive and sustainable models of urban living. Such an approach needs the co-creation of implementation strategies with key stakeholders: local communities of citizens, SMEs, policy makers, industrial partners and corporations. The results of these activities will fulfil the following objectives:

STRATEGY > To develop a joint multiscalar strategy for the relocalisation of production between pilots based on the RIS3 process specified in the Smart Specialisation Strategy. Such a strategy has a focus on leveraging local capacities, capabilities, and resources in neighbourhoods, and to connect them with larger-scale ecosystems, including Smart Specialisation Regions and trans-European partners.

PROTOTYPES > To select a series of experimentation areas (pilots) in partner cities in order to pilot interventions and deployments together with citizens (users, producers, co-producers), using Fab Labs as innovation and cultural hubs at the local scale. Local consortiums will be established in the pilot cities in order to bring together stakeholders: ideally SMEs, startups, makers, communities, policy makers and companies — carefully considering gender balance and inclusion. In all the pilot cities there are established consortiums, or they are being organised. Experimentation areas will focus on five thematic lines which facilitate the comparison and sharing of results to inform the iteration process. Each one of the themes will involve consortium partners and third parties who already expressed interest in participating in the project, and will be open for new collaborators to join. So far there are confirmed:

• Fashion and textiles, partner: Nike (confirmed as a third party for the next stage);
• Furniture and household products, partner: IKEA (Corporation, third party);
• Electronics, partner: Fairphone (SME, consortium partner);
• Food, partners: local restaurants and food supply businesses (SMEs);
• Mobility, partner: Open Source Vehicle (third party).

DIGITAL TOOLS > To integrate ecosystems of various open datasets and APIs in a common platform in order to:

• Identify: map local source materials, manufacturers, producers, artisans and other activities connected to circular economy and local production at neighbourhoods, and scalable to cities. The goal is to bridge with larger scale supply chains, in order to connect supply and demand for local production.
• Measure: metrics that measure the impact of Circular Economy products and services in the construction of the Fab City Prototypes vision. A common open standard for cities will be developed, based on previous work done by the consortium partners including UN-Habitat’s Urban Data, EU Open Data Portal, Smart Specialisation Platform, and Fab City Dashboard.
• Catalyse: to support the use of existing marketplaces and platforms that enable sharing practices, re-use of products and distributed manufacturing in each city using local supply chains and infrastructure.
• Share: a platform to share best practices and evidence among cities and consortium partners, concerning policies adopted, projects tested and citizen engagement strategies used. This platform will include instructional materials and resources to implement circular economy practices in design, innovation and digital fabrication processes.

1.2 Relation to the work programme

The Fab City Prototypes is a large scale demonstrator. It can be understood as a distributed city connected through online tools: the pilots in cities (Barcelona, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Milano, London, Zurich, Ioannina) will allow onsite experimentation with end-users and local ecosystems, while the sharing platforms will allow common metrics, knowledge and information exchange. For example: designs can travel across the demonstrator without having to be shipped physically — bits travel while atoms stay in cities.

Pilots will provide opportunities to prototype, test and demonstrate the value generated from new relationships between different stakeholders in cities/regions, following the Smart Specialisation Strategy in each one of these, and existing guidelines such as the European Commission’s Blueprint for cities and regions as launch pads for digital transformation. A major challenge in transitioning toward and achieving a Circular Economy is its viability for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) and its implementation at local levels. This is an area where the greatest impact can be achieved. It is also the connection and interrelation of the small scale with global markets and global factors where ICT technologies (such as open source platforms to share and commercialise designs) will play a significant role in connecting all pilots.

The project aligns with the ambition of Europe to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. The key goals of the project are aligned with the primary directives of the Circular Economy Action Plan by contributing to the reduction of municipal waste and packaging by 2030. The project will prioritize the implementation of ecodesign principles, food waste as a resource for local materials that could be inserted in supply chains, and co-creation activities where users can become co-designers and co-producers in places like Fab Labs and community production spaces. We aim to scale best practice not only at the European level but also globally through the existing network of Fab Labs (1.100 labs) and maker-spaces which will be following the project, together with the existing Fab City Network (16 official members). The European Commission has promoted an ambitious program on Circular Economy by establishing “a common EU target for recycling 65% of municipal waste by 2030; a common EU target for recycling 75% of packaging waste by 2030; a binding target to reduce landfilling to maximum of 10% of municipal waste by 2030.” To be achieved, these goals require the involvement of civil society in creating new opportunities for materials to be used as resources for local production, and by establishing new supply chains between SMEs and industries at the city and regional levels. The Smart Specialisation Strategies can be used as a common approach between regions.

Sex and gender considerations

The participating organisations actively promote equal representation of men and women in employment and decision-making, and removing institutional barriers to gender equality. The project will ensure women’s participation as active members in the different consortium entities. We support the mainstreaming of gender issues in circular economy business model research and policy, as a balanced gender composition improves the sustainability and quality of European business development. Gender consideration and equality will be carefully considered in our deliverables and overall communication strategies, as well as promoted and ensured through the composition of the Working Groups, and business models and policies to be developed. The current personnel making up the consortium (from all partners) results in near gender parity, with 35% female and 65% male staff at its first stage, aiming for a 50% and 50%, at least, for the final submission in phase two. Gender equality and gender balance will be a concern if there are any changes in personnel and activities within pilots and events.

1.3 Concept and methodology

1.3.1 Concept

A key aim of the Fab City approach is to change how cities source and use resources materials by shifting from a ‘Products In Trash Out’ (PITO) model to a ‘Data In Data Out’ (DIDO) self-sufficiency model. This means that more production of energy, food and products takes place in the city in response to local needs, fostering innovation in local SMEs and startups. As a result, the city’s imports and exports mostly occur in the form of data, ranging from knowledge to design and code. The application of this model can potentially reduce the energy that is consumed and the pollution that is generated when cities import goods and materials, which accounts for 70% of global carbon dioxide emissions. However, for this to be effective the city needs to be connected to a larger innovation ecosystem that produces the open source designs, code and knowledge — a digital “commons” — necessary to nurture the productive ecosystem at the local level.

The benefits of such an approach are not only environmental, but cultural, social and economic. The Fab City model has the potential to foster economic prosperity by creating new types of jobs and professions related to the knowledge economy and the development and implementation of new approaches and technological solutions. This includes advanced manufacturing (digital fabrication, Industry 4.0), distributed energy production, new cryptocurrencies for value exchange, and food production (community supported agriculture) and circular economy (urban permaculture). Moreover, the approach aims to foster new collaborations between the government and citizens as well as a renewed education system based on learning-by-doing, finding solutions for local needs through digital fabrication technologies, and sharing them with others through the global network.

1.3.2 Methodology

Multi-scalar approach: From neighbourhoods to cities, to systemic change. The Fab City Prototypes project applies a new approach to the re-localisation of production in cities and the use of digital fabrication technologies at different scales: from domestic 3d printers that could use recyclable materials coming from food waste; to the neighbourhood community production spaces (Fab Labs) as co-creation platforms; the city-wide smart and flexible factories that manufacture products on demand based on open source designs; and the global supplies of highly standardized products and materials. Each one of these scales needs to be connected and articulated to act as a complementary ecosystem for local production. The city pilots will enable the articulation of these ecosystems in order to test new forms of value and business generation within the city consortiums, informed by Smart Specialisation Strategies in regions, which will be synchronised with the transversal tools and research supported by the consortium as a whole. The Fab City Prototypes project has a strong emphasis on business model innovation for circular economies, commons-based production and open source. The project will explore, through practical experimentation, how businesses can leverage open source and circularity principles to develop sound business models that can boost economic growth, employment and resilience. The project will design and test a modular integrated toolkit based on the existing sustainable and commons-based business model innovation platforms and methods: Circular.academy, Pentagrowth, and Remodel.

Work Package structure:

The project is structured in 7 interconnected work packages (WP), which comprise activities based on existing frameworks and experience from consortium members. These activities will focus on the role of end-users and SMEs in a new paradigm of distributed production.

Consortium as a whole: The Fab City Prototypes will build a transeuropean demonstrator in cities that allows 25 different organisations — including SMEs, corporations, city governments (all participating cities will count on their local government as a consortium partner) and research centers — to develop sustainable business models for the local implementation of Circular Economy products and services emerging from SMEs and startups.

• Fab Lab Barcelona | IAAC: Will act as coordinator of the Fab City Prototypes project, and will conduct the main project management tasks in order to articulate the development of experiments in the pilot cities, and the development of online tools for distributed assessment and production. Fab Lab Barcelona will provide existing ongoing projects such as fablabs.io, Fab City Dashboard and Smart Citizen.
• City of Barcelona — Ajuntament de Barcelona: The City of Barcelona will support the local pilot activities, linking them with the Barcelona Digital City 2017–2020 plan, which is the city’s roadmap to drive technological sovereignty for citizens. Poblenou experimentation area will be linked to the Maker District and Ateneus de Fabricacion (the public network of Fab Labs). The city will facilitate the access to open data and public infrastructure to support the project activities.
• Waag Society (Research): Waag Society, home to Fab Lab Amsterdam, Textile Lab Amsterdam and Open Wetlab, is in charge of coordinating project pilots at large and coordinates the local pilots in Amsterdam in close collaboration with Metabolic and Pakhuis de Zwijger. Pilots in Amsterdam are concentrated on finding linkages between the city center and the surrounding countryside — and between the HORECA industry and makers inside the city — to find the opportunities for transforming consistent volumes of food waste into valuable inputs for decentralized agricultural and industrial processes in and around the city.
• Danish Design Center (Research and Development): Danish Design Centre will be responsible for planning and executing the Copenhagen pilot project, which aims to investigate and uncover the potential of local manufacturing as well as test the feasibility of the alleged new manufacturing revolution on industry-level as well as within new waves of smaller, yet scalable, digital manufacturing startups and SMEs. It does this by focusing on two objectives: Exploring the demand side, and exploring the supply side.
• Royal College of Art, London (Academic Research): The RCA will be responsible for providing design expertise (product, service and system) building on previously funded re-distributed manufacturing network and development of a design framework for viable circular and distributed production. In collaboration with Machines Room they will lead the executing of the pilot in London.
• Fab City Grand Paris (Association — Network): The role of the association Fab City Grand Paris is to coordinate the works on the Fab City Paris Prototype as well as to facilitate the collaboration between the fablab ecosystem, industries and the authorities. The Paris prototype will leverage the local expertise of the association’s member organisations, in areas like industrial design and digital manufacturing, architecture and urban planning, circular and collaborative economies, open source, urban agriculture, food innovation and social entrepreneurship.
• Metabolic (Research and Development): Metabolic is responsible for providing the circularity and sustainability expertise to the project, particularly knowledge of circular and resilient city development through the valorization of new streams of materials and information. In practical terms, Metabolic aims to bring the expertise on creating and running “De Ceuvel” (De Ceuvel). De Ceuvel is an award-winning, sustainable planned workplace for creative and social enterprises on a former shipyard adjacent to the Johan van Hasselt kanaal off the river IJ in Amsterdam North.
• Joint Research Centre (Research): The JRC contributions will stimulate and develop evidence-based and future-oriented policy strategies, using a wide range policy lab toolbox, and engaging an extended network of local, regional, national, EU and other international stakeholders through co-creation and foresight workshops. The Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Policy Unit / EU Policy Lab (JRC.I.2) will be leading, with inputs from the Modelling, Indicators & Impact Evaluation Unit (JRC.I.1), the Territorial Development Unit (JRC.B.3), and the Industrial Leadership and Circular Economy Unit (JRC.B.5).
• P2P Foundation (Research and Development): The main role of the P2P Foundation will thus concern the documentation and sharing of practice-based knowledge produced by the pilots. Its research network along with the broader P2P community will leverage the metrics, assessment and design tools and the common infrastructure to produce, enrich and maintain a knowledge commons.
• i2Cat (Research and Development): Digital platform development such as Plataforma Industrial 4.0 and tools for data treatment developed in projects such as iSPACE. i2CAT will connect Fab City Prototypes project with the existing initiatives such as Smart Specialization Platform “Industry 4.0 & SMEs” with regional strategies such as RIS3CAT and with local industries that participate in the project Anella Industrial.
• OuiShare (Network): OuiShare will support the work on circular, open and collaborative business models, as well as methodologies for citizen participation and urban innovation. OuiShare will also support the dissemination of the project results throughout its vast network of entrepreneurs, communities, policymakers and companies (10K registered members, 40K newsletter subscribers, 100 local group managers) in Europe and beyond.
• UN-Habitat: UN-Habitat’s Urban Data Observatory will provide open APIs to the Fab City Dashboard to develop a common metrics for all the participating cities. UN-Habitat Urban Agenda is aligned with the Fab City vision, and it is now present in 90 countries around the world.
• Ideas for Change (SME): Ideas for Change will support the pilot enterprises in designing and implementing business models and engagement strategies by means of workshops, one to one sessions and mentorship. It will apply the Pentagrowth model and toolkit for open and accelerated growth, which has already been used by companies looking to transition to more contributive strategies while sustaining competitiveness.
• Pakhuis de Zwijger (Cultural organisation): Pakhuis de Zwijger will support the pilot projects in their visibility and connectivity through their Amsterdam based stage and different Dutch and European networks. Pakhuis de Zwijger will organize different events in which relevant stakeholders (a.o. government, businesses, science institutions, civil society and city makers) engage in a dialogue on a.o. (social) innovation, collaboration and financial structures.
• Machines Room (Fab Lab): Machines Room will act as the central node of activity within the Maker Mile, providing digital fabrication infrastructure and an associated education program. As part of the Fab CIty initiative, Machines Room will work with early stage redistributed manufacturing businesses in the local area to test business models and to assess where value lies for local employment, local supply chains, customer attitudes, materials and waste.
• City of Copenhagen — Copenhagen Solutions Lab: Copenhagen Solutions Lab, City of Copenhagen will function as the city strategic partner. CSL will offer expertise in different forms of public-private partnerships and connect the project to a substantial network of local partners. As city partner participation will ensure that the pilot and outcome also will be rooted in city policy. Finally, Copenhagen Solutions Lab will in the project function as access point to Fab Lab UNDERBROEN which offers relevant production facilities and a network of relevant SMV’s works with local, distributed production.
• Fab Lab Berlin by Makea Industries GmbH (Fab Lab): Fab Lab Berlin brings a state-of-the-art digital fabrication infrastructure and a related education program to the Berlin group. As part of the Fab City initiative, Fab Lab Berlin will identify, develop and test both demand- and supply-side potentials of business models based on local small batch design and production. However, the focus is put on the supply-side potentials and more precisely on three categories of potentials: novel materials, processes and applications. Fab Lab Berlin will further leverage the resources of its local, national and international network of research & education partners, makers & startups, industrial partners and policymakers for the sake of the initiative.
• Open State (Research and Development): Offering experience in setting up productive and diversified partner consortiums as well as designing a process for effective group decisions and output. “Transition design” means to form a holistic vision and story among all parts and partners, which are capable to tell one convincing message to the larger public. Documentation and open-sourcing of processes and products developed throughout the project. Winning over institutional and corporate city partners in Berlin.
• Politecnico di Milano (Academic Research): Polimi can embed into the project an evidence-based approach for policy formulation and evaluation, leveraging on the results of the development and application of a framework to evaluate pilots (results and impacts). In cooperation with the JRC EU Policy Lab, Polimi could support the application of a policy lab approach to the development of the Fab City concept, while applying a service design perspective. Finally, it could candidate the City of Milan as a possible site to host a pilot project.
• Ecovala (SME): Ecovala operates the Circular Academy, a training and coaching methodology aiming at facilitating the creation of circular business models. The methodology will support the transition of participating SMEs towards circular economy.
• Provenance (SME): Provenance will bring its knowledge of blockchain technology to create transparency in supply chains — including linking digital with physical, creating blockchain backed materials journeys and visualising materials flows and insights. They will assess, advise and provide a platform (user accounts, API etc) when needed, to develop and test blockchain technology for creating transparent local supply chains in the pilots of the project and in the creation of the Fab City Dashboard platform.
• Zurich University of the Arts (ZhdK) (Academic Research): Leverage links with local maker groups: Fablab Zürich: http://zurich.fablab.ch/; Dynamo (provided by the city of Zürich): http://www.dynamo.ch/; the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society: http://www.mechatronicart.ch/mechartlab/. Implementation of new Tools (Digital Fabrication) to the design process and in Co-Design (Next gen.CAD, OnShape.com etc) to the design process. ZHdK could host a city pilot in partnership with local SMEs and organisations.
• Fairphone (SME): Fairphone will provide their experience in the market with FP2, and will connect with the network of Fablabs as technology knowledge / manufacturing hubs, that can help support activities related to the lifetime extension of modular (easy to repair) devices. Fairphone is looking into opportunities for a more distributed repair experience in which the consumer is involved (similar to repair cafes).
• Zicla (SME): Zicla will contribute in turning waste generated by cities into new products for these cities as business opportunities, and to develop projects based on waste and to create innovative products that contribute to efficient, sustainable and, friendly business growth that pursues attending to cities’ needs.
• Zero Waste Europe (Network): Zero Waste Europe will support the dissemination of the best practices and results of the project through its network of more than 350 municipalities in Europe committed to achieve Zero Waste via its CSO members in 20 European countries. As an NGO specialised on waste prevention and management, Zero Waste Europe will support the work on circular economy business models, local policies and ecodesign, providing the consortium with an expertise developed for many years both on the ground and at the policy level.
• IKEA (Inter IKEA Systems): Inter IKEA Systems will contribute in the facilitation in pilots. IKEA is present in all the cities where pilots are located, and it is expected that material flows will be connected between these and community production spaces (Fab Labs, makerspaces). IKEA will contribute in the theme of furniture and households products.

Read more about the ambition and the potential impact of the project here.

The post Fab City Prototypes  – Designing and making for the real world appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Benjamin Tincq: Hi Thomas. Can you give us a brief introduction and tell us how you ended up launching the Fab City cities project in Barcelona?

Tomas Diez: I am an urbanist and technologist from Venezuela. I moved to Barcelona 10 years ago to work at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC). They were setting up a fab lab at the time and I took charge of it. It was the perfect way to combine my previous education with my interest in cities and distributed production. It also taught me that if we want to change cities, we need to look beyond the design point of view and consider the dynamics at play. It’s not just about putting sidewalks or trees here or there, but thinking about the fundamental dynamics that could transform the way people live in an urban space.

So, Fab Cities are basically a combination of digital manufacturing, sustainable and smart cities, and circular economy. Is that right?

Yes, one could say so, but remember that digital production is more than just 3d printing! The Fab lab is really a base for a larger vision to digitize and relocate fabrication. It’s a playground for experimentation where we can prototype new distribution models and reinvent the relationship between consumption and production. We are mainly researching fabrication models that allow people to make their own things closer to home, instead of buying everything from China.

Fab Labs are not about technology however, they are about the culture around technology. And they are spreading fast. Today there are over one thousand fab labs across the world, that together function as a distributed production system on a small scale. I can design something in Barcelona, and without using fossil fuel, create the identical product in Cape Town, Wellington or Tokyo.

“Fab labs are the cultural agents that will help transform the industrial and fabrication industry.”

Our approach is closely linked to the notion of circular economy, in the sense that we aim shorten and localize production loops. With the right infrastructure and knowledge we could reduce the amount of material that a city imports and rescale globalization. It also allows companies to create social value and not only profit.

Can you day a few words on the Fab City project that was initiated in Barcelona?

In 2011 we had the opportunity to take our ideas to a more the political level. We proposed the Fab city project, which challenges cities and regions to start building the infrastructure to be locally productive and globally connected by 2054. In 2014 the city of Barcelona opened the first public Fab Lab. The aim was to inspire other political leaders by offering an example.

This year we were joined by Amsterdam, Paris, Santiago de Chile, Detroit and even the kingdom of Bhutan. In total the challenge now gathers 12 cities, 2 regions, 2 states and 2 countries. Of course, being part of the fab city initiative does not mean you will become one tomorrow. It’s about establishing a roadmap for cities that want to collaborate on building productive and resilient cities and empower citizens through technology.

What are the most interesting projects emerging from the Fab City Challenge?

We don’t have a flagship project yet, but several are beginning to look quite promising. Products such as the shower loop, an idea initially developed during POC21, are being developed. They could become part of the fab city ecosystem, contributing to a new mindset and relationship between people and products.

Another example is the Poblenou neighborhood, which was recently announced as Barcelona’s “Maker District” by the city council. With their support and in collaboration with Ikea, this neighborhood was turned into a 1,5km2 Fab City prototype. We mapped existing businesses and institutions that align with the Fab City vision, from fab labs and makerspaces to restaurants that serve local produce. Soon to come is also Poblenou’s “Super Fab Lab”, which will connect all the individual initiatives of this little productive ecosystem.

“A fab city is not a city full of fab labs. It’s ecosystem that is varied, coherent and connected”

Paris and Toulouse are joining the Fab City Network. How do you see them contributing to the network with their specificities?

We have been working on a type of charter that lists the minimum actions required for a city to join the network. Examples are sharing data with the rest of the network, supporting local teams that are contributing to our vision, like Ouishare in Paris or Artilect in Toulouse, and participating in our activities like the annual Fab Cities Summit.

The network is meant to spread good practices to cities, but also we hope to see each city develop their own roadmap. We expect the next Fab City Summit in Paris 2018 to show some concrete results that can help us clarify the entire network’s vision and establish a trajectory for the next 10 years.

Tomás Diez

What do you see the impact being on companies in terms of their business models and supply chain? What is their role in this urban and industrial transformation?

Many large companies today rely on closed off and controlled access to production means and information as their main source of wealth and growth. So, naturally the concept of redistributing access disrupts this business model and poses a threat to several people’s interests.

Today the business model of companies like Ikea and that of Opendesk, a platform with local open source furniture, are vastly different. However, I could imagine OpenDesk-like models being replicated by the latter in 5 or 10 years. We have been working together with Ikea to explore potential scenarios like this. Today people buy unassembled furniture in a warehouse outside the city and bring it home to put it together with instructions. Soon people could design their own furniture on demand in micro factories that are located in city centres. This would not only avoid storage costs but allow for personalized and customized furniture.

Other larger enterprises interested in bringing production closer to consumption for example are Adidas, Nike, Airbus or Saint Gobain. They are especially interested in the culture around the technology as well as ideas on open society, open innovation, distributed networks and blockchain.

I see a convergence with another big trend, the evolution of work as something more independent, platform economies and automatization through digital technologies.

Absolutely. Many people nowadays don’t want to work as full-time employees anymore. I like to connect it with the Zygmunt Bauman concept of “liquid society”: Time, work, family, love… all the structures that we considered to be fixed and to which we hold on to are becoming more and more liquid and fluctuating.

Being able to adapt to these changes means building more resilient organizations and networks. The Fab city could in a way be considered the productive organ for this liquid life.

Story by Benjamin Tincq, edited by Bianca Pick.

Cross-posted from Ouishare Magazine
Lead Image from the Fab City Summer School in Milan

The post The Fab City: It’s More Than Just a City Full of Fab Labs appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The full White Paper on the “Locally productive, globally connected self-sufficient cities” is available here.

For more information on the Fab City Project visit their website.

Photo by Bear the Quiet Prophet

The post The Fab City Whitepaper appeared first on P2P Foundation.