Blog - Fab City Montréal

The White Paper of the Montréal Fab City Campus meets the Americas

By Monique Chartrand|2025-11-01T13:25:08-04:0031 October 2025|Territoire|

The White Paper resulting from the Fab City Campus Montréal, *At the Meeting of the Americas*, is an invitation to continue the collaborations initiated with the Fab Cities across the Americas. Its objective is, among others, to promote collaboration among the various actors within the Fab City community to foster a bioregional approach to the transition toward a new productive model that enhances human relationships with other species.

How the City of Kigali is using trees and collaboration to build climate resilience

By Laura Espiau Guarner|2025-08-12T09:17:59-04:0025 August 2025|Ecology|

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are undeniably « à la mode ». As they have been showcased here before, they are scalable and effective means that use, protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems to address the interlinked climate and biodiversity crises while delivering important benefits for human well-being and livelihoods.

City Living Labs for coastal resilience: the case of Sligo in Ireland

By Laura Espiau Guarner|2025-08-12T09:00:26-04:0018 August 2025|Ecology|

Maybe a decade ago, I first became aware of sea level rise being flagged as a serious warning sign. I confess that, back then, a couple of centimeters per year didn’t seem that alarming. Now, I grasp much better the dangers - and in many cases, the already existing effects - of climate change on coastlines.

Doing better (not more) with less: functional economy businesses

By Laura Espiau Guarner|2025-08-12T09:02:08-04:0011 August 2025|Economy|

We hear it all the time: our current economic models need a deep transformation to become more ecologically and socially sustainable. But what does that mean in practice—especially for businesses? Can a company remain profitable while producing or selling less? One promising answer comes from a model called the Functional and Cooperative Economy (Économie de la Fonctionnalité, or EFC in French), a concept mostly developed and studied in France. It's a different way of looking at value creation—one that focuses not on selling more products, but on providing better services, often with fewer materials and less environmental impact.

When networks are open and the air is clean: IoT and bicycles in Catalonia

By Laura Espiau Guarner|2025-07-29T09:41:12-04:0029 July 2025|Innovation|

In the midst of the boom of artificial intelligence and algorithms that seem to know more about us than we do ourselves, we’ve somewhat lost sight of another buzz from a few years ago: the Internet of Things (IoT), the digital network that allows devices to be connected and communicate to each other, and to us. For the ‘moderately’ (ehem) tech-savvy like myself, this might conjure up images of smart fridges that know when you’re home and suggest a healthy dinner with whatever’s left inside.