Fab City Hamburg Playbook
How can cities become places of sustainable, digitally supported production? What role do open workshops, circular material flows, and participatory innovation formats play?
Answers to these questions can be found in the newly published Fab City Hamburg Playbook, which was developed by the New Production Institute at Helmut Schmidt University in collaboration with numerous partner institutions.
The playbook compiles the results of the four-year dtec.bw research project “Fab City: Decentralized Digital Production for Urban Value Creation” (2020–2024) and is now available for download via open access:
A playbook for sustainable cities
The Fab City Hamburg Playbook is a visually appealing, practical, and open guide that documents key ideas and tools for shaping an urban production revolution. It shows concrete ways in which cities can localize their value creation, implement circular economies, and democratize digital manufacturing.
Target groups are in particular
- Local authorities & urban development stakeholders
- Universities & Research Institutions
- Maker communities & educational institutions
- Companies, social enterprises, and civil society initiatives
Key content at a glance
The playbook documents key findings and insights from the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary project. These include, among others:
1. Fab City Framework & Full-Stack Approach
The playbook describes the systemic “full stack” – a multi-level framework for developing resilient production infrastructures that integrates technological, social, economic, and educational dimensions.
2. Establishment of nine OpenLabs in Hamburg
Nine thematically specialized real-world laboratories (including food, medtech, plastics, and microproduction) were established and operated. They offer low-threshold access to digital technologies, promote civic engagement, and enable on-site prototyping.
3. Development of open source prototypes
A total of 17 documented prototypes – from urban composters to low-cost microfactories – demonstrate how technological solutions can be developed locally and collaboratively.
4. Methodology &
Impact
Over 150 workshops with more than 2,000 participants were held. This is supplemented by our own OpenLab Data Monitoring System for evaluating impact and sustainability.
5. Transfer & Scaling
The playbook provides modular, replicable approaches that can be used and further developed by cities, educational institutions, and civil society actors beyond Hamburg—in the spirit of global open-source urban development.
A contribution to the Fab City Global Initiative
Since 2019, Hamburg has been a member of the international Fab City Global Initiative, which aims to enable cities to produce all their material goods locally by 2054, while simultaneously facilitating the global exchange of knowledge via digital data.
