The Fab City Foundation stewards the Fab City Global Initiative and supports the growing network of cities, regions, and territories working toward locally productive, globally connected urban systems.

Sharing roots with the global Fab Lab movement and collaborating with Fab Foundation, Fab City takes the ideals of the Fab Lab – connectivity, culture, and creativity – to a city-scale.

We operate autonomously, focusing specifically on supporting cities and territories in their transition toward regeneration.

The initiative was launched in 2014 with the Barcelona Pledge, setting a long-term vision for cities to produce what they consume. As the network expanded rapidly across geographies, the need emerged for a dedicated structure to steward the vision, coordinate international collaboration, and develop the shared tools required to implement it in practice.

In 2020, the Fab City Foundation was legally established in Estonia, a country recognized for its advanced digital governance systems. The choice reflected the initiative’s commitment to open, transparent, and digitally enabled forms of coordination across a distributed global network.

The Foundation builds on the collaboration of institutions that shaped the movement from its early days, including the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), the Fab Foundation, and the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, together with cities, research organizations, and civic innovators across the world.


Early contributors to its governance included Vicente Guallart, Julie Hjort, Liz Corbin, Oriol Soler, Alex Pazaitis, and Francesco Cingolani.

Today, through the strategic guidance of the Supervisory Board, the Fab City Foundation supports the global network, develops shared frameworks like the Fab City Full Stack, and enables learning and collaboration across territories.

Transparency and accountability are central to the way the Fab City Foundation operates. The organization maintains a public transparency contract outlining its governance structure, operational principles, and commitments to open knowledge and responsible stewardship of the initiative.