A "fab city" aims to produce everything - energy, commodities, food - that it consumes. And Plymouth is one of them
A concept that is very resonant for us at A/UK is the “cosmo-local” - communities availing themselves of global resources (of information and expertise) to make their own immediate conditions powerful and effective.
Fab City is a really interesting riff on this - a global network of cities that commit to “produce everything that they consume” by 2054 (the date when 70% of us will live in cities globally). See the blurb below from their white paper:
More than 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, global urbanisation keeps accelerating. United Nations projections indicate that 75% of the human population will be living in cities by 2050.
Newly created cities and the urbanisation process in rural areas replicates a lifestyle based on consumerism and the linear economy. This causes destructive social and economic impact, while compromising the ecological systems of the planet.
We are losing livelihoods through both offshoring and automation, and this in turn leads to the demise of dynamic hubs of practical and cultural knowledge, where things are made.
Extreme industrialisation and globalisation have turned cities into the most voracious consumers of materials, and they are overwhelmingly the source of carbon emissions through both direct and embodied energy consumption; we need to reimagine the cities and how they operate.
The Fab City is an international initiative started by IAAC, MIT's CBA, the Barcelona City Council and the Fab Foundation to develop locally productive and globally connected self-suffcient cities…The project is an international think tank of civic leaders, makers, urbanists and innovators.
They are working on changing the paradigm of the current industrial economy, where the city operates on a linear model of importing products and producing waste. They want a shift towards a spiral innovation ecosystem, in which materials flow inside cities and information on how things are made circulates globally.
Fab City is about building a new economy based on distributed data and manufacturing infrastructure.
“Distributed manufacturing” (or fab labs) have been promising to change our economic paradigm for about ten years - but have only appeared in somewhat gimmicky and temporary forms in the bigger cities.
But we’re delighted to see this strong network of support and information build - and particularly to see Plymouth as one of the 28 cities in their network (we’re very involved there).
More on Plymouth below, from rofessor Chris Bennewith, Head of the School of Art, Design and Architecture at the University of Plymouth:
“This is another example of creative collaboration helping to put Plymouth on the global map as a centre for innovation and ingenuity. Through initiatives such as this, and the iMayflower project announced earlier this year, the city is showing it has the ambition and expertise to keep transforming itself and the people who live, work, study and visit here.
“The University of Plymouth has always prided itself on interdisciplinary research and teaching that has individual and collective sustainability and social responsibility at its core. Our pioneering work on Smart Cities, Big Data, energy and transport – as well as our current investment in a Digital Fabrication Lab – will expand this and ensure Plymouth remains at the forefront of innovation in this area.”