Exploratory visualisation
The Fab City Dashboard (Visualizar'16, Madrid) and early open-data mapping. Project-based measurement; no shared schema. The first attempt to render Fab City data at all.
The build-up · 2014 → 2026
Since the Barcelona Pledge in 2014, the Fab City Global Initiative has carried a 50%-self-sufficiency commitment without an instrument to verify it. Sixteen projects across four overlapping phases brought the field from ad-hoc dashboards to the federated AI causal-inference instrument PLANETAI proposes.
Four overlapping phases
Each phase did not replace the previous one. They overlap, accumulate, and feed forward. The field's maturation is visible in the trajectory.
The Fab City Dashboard (Visualizar'16, Madrid) and early open-data mapping. Project-based measurement; no shared schema. The first attempt to render Fab City data at all.
The Fab City Index at Paris (Utopies, 2017–2018) and Hamburg (Boeing, 2020–2024). Single-cell macro-sector benchmarking, capped at 37/100 by public-data limits — the gap PLANETAI inherits.
The Fab City Full Stack introduced at Fab City Summit Amsterdam (2019), refined through Reflow (Horizon 2020), and published in Springer 2022/2024. A multiscalar measurement and implementation guide that made the Fab City thesis programmable.
The Full Stack as analytical lens: Peuckert et al. at FAB25 (runner-up best paper, 2025) and Vivanco's commissioned metrics work (2025) prepare the ground. PLANETAI (2026) is the synthesis — a federated AI causal-inference instrument, not a dashboard.
Sixteen projects · sixteen authors
Each row is a published artefact, a programme, or a workshop that moved the field forward. Names credited as recorded by Fab City Foundation archives; not exhaustive of contributors.
| Year | Project | Lead / Key people | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | Barcelona Pledge (Fab City Summit) | Tomas Diez, Vicente Guallart, Neil Gershenfeld | Founding declaration; 50%-self-sufficiency commitment by 2054. The instrument the next twelve years would build. |
| 2016 · Sep–Oct | Fab City Dashboard v0.1 | Massimo Menichinelli, Mariana Quintero, Julien Paris · concept by Tomas Diez (Fab Lab Barcelona) | First measurement tool. Visualizar'16 workshop, Madrid. Phase 1 begins. |
| 2017 | Fab City Index Paris | Utopies consultancy · Fab City Grand Paris | Economic sector benchmarking for French cities. Gen-1 of the Fab City Index. |
| 2018 · Jul | Fab City Summit Paris | Tomas Diez, Saskia Sassen, Carlos Moreno · Fab City Network (28 cities) | Fab City Index presented as a strategic tool. Network at 28 cities. |
| 2018 | Fab City Network expansion | 10 new cities/regions join | Growing demand for standardised metrics across signatories. |
| 2019 · Jun | Fab City Summit Amsterdam — Full Stack introduced | Fab City Foundation: Tomas Diez, Kate Armstrong, Liz Corbin, Ida Jusic | First public presentation of the Full Stack framework. Phase 3 begins. |
| 2019 · Q3 | Full Stack workshop · Boston / Kingston | Fab Foundation, Kingston (NY) local ecosystem | Initial cross-sector pilot of the Full Stack framework. |
| 2020 | Reflow Project launches (Horizon 2020) | ~€8M, 25 European partners | Local material flow knowledge base + Reflow OS. EU-funded foundation for Fab City OS. |
| 2020 | Fab City Full Stack paper (early version) | Tomas Diez et al. | Foundation text circulated. |
| 2021–2022 | Reflow OS → Fab City OS evolution | Fab City Hamburg, Dyne.org, Helmut Schmidt University, HIWW | Reflow OS adapted as core of Fab City OS. Interfacer project funded. |
| 2022 · Jul | Fab City Full Stack chapter (Springer) | Tomas Diez, Vasilis Niaros, Carolina Ferro | Peer-reviewed; chapter in Global collaboration, local production (Moritz, Redlich, Buxbaum-Conradi, Wulfsberg eds., Springer 2024). Presented at Fab Conference. |
| 2022 · Oct | Bali Fab Fest — Full Stack as curatorial framework | Fab City Foundation | Full Stack used to programme an entire international gathering. Fab Island Challenge hosted. |
| 2022 | Full Stack Implementation Guide v1.0 | Fab City Foundation | Practical toolkit for network members. |
| 2024 | Fab City Index Hamburg published | Niels Boeing | 16 macro-sectors; publicly-available-data approach. Springer chapter in the same Moritz et al. volume. 37/100 ceiling reached. |
| 2025 · Jul | FAB25 Conference, Brno & Prague — Full Stack as analytical lens | Jan Peuckert, Victoria Wenzelmann, Gerrit Rüdebusch · Tomas Vivanco | "Measuring the Impacts of Fab Labs" (runner-up best paper) reviews ~1,000 studies and finds zero rigorous bioregional impact evidence. The gap PLANETAI is built to close. |
| 2025 · H2 | Tomas Vivanco metrics commission | Tomas Vivanco | Metrics model based on Full Stack for city-level Fab City assessment. Operationalises the framework into a 4-pillar × 5-scale matrix. |
| 2026 · Q2 | PLANETAI (under development) | Fab Foundation · Fab City Foundation · Tomas Diez · Tomas Vivanco · 4-bioregion consortium | Federated AI causal-inference instrument for community-tier production monitoring across four bioregional pilots (Barcelona, Boston, Santiago, Bali). Two pre-registered hypotheses. Open by construction. |
Continuity
Each previous phase made the next possible. Dashboards taught the field to render. Indices taught it to benchmark. The Full Stack taught it to think systematically. PLANETAI is what happens when those three competencies meet AI infrastructure and a falsifiable hypothesis.