‘Smart’ in another way: the potential of the Fab City approach to reconfigure urban dynamics

Is the ‘Smart City’ the only ‘smart’ city model? Not necessarily, if we consider the space opened by the ‘Fab City’ project, which expands the idea of fab labs and seems to constitute an alternative approach to urban functioning. In this approach, production is delivered at the city level, close to the inhabitants, with the promise of being able to meet some basic needs, notably through manufacturing workshops that are located in the neighborhoods and that put relatively advanced machines at the disposal of local communities. Proponents of the ‘Fab City’ promote a city where citizens once again become manufacturers and take responsibility for their own needs, reclaiming technologies collaboratively and contributing to the control of various flows (materials, energy, etc.) which shape urban ecological situations. In order to evaluate to what extent this project can constitute an original and even alternative guiding framework adapted to certain rising urban challenges, this contribution begins by studying its emergence and the rationale on which it is built, so as to better identify the vision it rests on and its embedded socio-technical dimensions. The contribution then specifies and analyzes the issues that are reframed and the strategic implications that result from them, demonstrating how this approach tends to displace ways of considering cities and their functioning. The analysis thus highlights the intellectual and operational space available for a different type of project and trajectory for cities that wish to have an alternative locally anchored way of using technical resources in the service of the inhabitants while better respecting ecological constraints.