Blog - Fab City Montréal

Imagining a networked future for the manufacturing industry

By Patrick Tanguay|2022-06-20T04:53:37-04:0023 September 2021|Fabrication|

A couple of years ago Radha Mistry, who leads foresight practice at Autodesk, presented a potential future for the manufacturing industry, a much more networked and flexible future. What if small towns impacted by local plant closures, with no jobs, no money, and a dying Mains Street were instead home to a new version of the industry? One modelled around “a network of configurable microfactories that leverages the manufacturing-as-a-service concept?”

Regenerative or regenerative?

By Patrick Tanguay|2022-06-20T04:54:10-04:0021 September 2021|Economy|

Smart, green, renewal, sustainable, low-carbon, carbon neutral, fair. The list of words and concepts that are framed for good or marketing and reframed for other intents is ever-growing. Or, to be less cynical, are adopted by quite different crowds who interpret the words and concepts in different ways. As already mentioned in another post, regenerative is likely to be one of the next concepts to split off in different directions. Here are two articles on the topic, with differing tones and methods, but both interesting in their own way.

Nonprofits as infrastructure

By Patrick Tanguay|2022-06-20T04:54:31-04:0016 September 2021|Territoire|

An important idea and angle to a very real challenge, one that will be of growing importance: how do nonprofits and CBOs (Community-Based Organization) maintain and, when needed, scale their infrastructure to keep vital services going and respond to growing demand?

Rewilding our cities

By Patrick Tanguay|2022-08-05T08:31:30-04:0014 September 2021|Design|

As the number of calls and projects to rewild the countryside multiply, it’s important to remember that our cities replaced ecosystems and are themselves habitats for their populations, which means they could benefit from rewilding too. This piece at The Guardian looks at beauty, biodiversity and the biophilic cities movement.

Making Futures

By Patrick Tanguay|2022-06-20T04:55:58-04:005 August 2021|Design|

If you want to know what Fab City is really about, the history and thinking behind it, the implications, and some of the directions the community wants to take it, you could hardly do better than this paper by one of the co-founders, Tomas Diez.