The Fab and the Smart City.

The use of machines

and technology for the city production by its
citizens

Tomas Diez Abstract

Fab Lab Barcelona - IAAC During the last decades, the relationship between
Pujades 102 technology and people has been continuously changing;
Barcelona, 08005. Spain the first computers and cnc machines appeared at the
[email protected] middle 50’s, personal computers on the 70’s, the
popularization of Internet on the 90’s, and more
Alex Posada recently the smartphones (which combine both),
Hangar Barcelona produced an evolution on how and for what we are
Passatge del Marquès de Santa using extended capabilities to relate ourselves with the
Isabel, 40. Barcelona, 08018. reality. These new tools are now part of our everyday
Spain activities and lives, giving us a vast access to the
[email protected] production (and consumption) of knowledge as never
did before, and also the opportunity to share it from/to
anywhere, at anytime, and by/for anyone. A simple
microcontroller in a control room of the city could affect
the lives of thousands of people, a twitted message
could modify our mobility patterns, or a broken
stoplight can change the time we arrive to our daily
activities. It seems that we are more and more
dependent on technology, but we might change that.
The provision of tools for citizens to reinvent their cities
Copyright is held by the author/owner(s).
could change the dependency of technology, and
TEI 2013, Feb 10-13, 2013, Barcelona, Spain. furthermore develop a closer relationship between
ACM xxx-x-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxx-xx. humans and machines, working together for a common
purpose.

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Keywords Internet and changed the video industry, and how

Personal fabrication, do it yourself (DIY), fab labs, other innovations were based on our basic instincts as
smart cities, 3d printing, real time data, personal data humans. In this sense, the questions is around the
collection, crowdsourcing. creation of technology, the process of innovation and
the tools we have to as citizen, not at the industrial
scale but at the common citizen scale, or in a
ACM Classification Keywords community scale.
H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g.,
HCI): Miscellaneous. See [3] for help using the ACM Open source hardware and software are opening up
Classification system. innovative processes in cities, driven by citizens, by the
use of PCs, Internet and a new set of tools for
General Terms invention.. Citizen self-empowerment through
Guides, instructions, author’s kit, conference technology will play a key role on the future cities. The
publication do it yourself (DIY) movement, collaborative invention
(DIWO, do it with others), open hardware and open
Technology and humans software are bringing a fascinating set of tools for
Internet, ubiquitous computing and technology everyone with a PC and Internet connection. In this
advances are building up new ecosystems in the urban way, the tools that have been used to go in and out of
environment. Computers were created in the middle of the digital world, are now the main channels to act in
XXth century, and started to be transformational when the physical world. Low cost and easy to use
they became personal and accessible to common minicomputers with sensors and actuators equipped
people (at late 70’s and early 80’s), we certainly with Internet communication capabilities sending real
embedded personal computation in our lives by the use time data of our environment and making it available to
of devices which have small computers to develop tasks others, 1.5k USD 3D printers connected to our
in order to make our systems work. Internet was computers making objects in our living room, online
invented during the cold war for military and security open APIs for anyone to connect different online
reasons, which it was never used for; it became the platforms in a single solution for specific needs, are just
most important invention during the last decades when examples of how we are in front of the most fascinating
it turned accessible and available to be used by anyone. times for creation and innovation coming from ordinary
PCs with Internet connectivity constructed the digital people and not from NASA, DARPA or MIT engineers.
and informational era which we are living in today. The
formula does not work when all these tools are just Smart Citizen. The scale of the person and a
used for entertainment, advertising or to conquer other microcontroller
countries, in Sex, Bombs and Burgers Peter Novak
explains how the industry of porn helped to make the Smart Citizen is a platform for citizen’s participation in
major improvements in video streaming and quality in the production of cities, through the production of

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useful information and knowledge sharing based on to design new sets of shields which can have additional
open source tools for data capturing and sharing, and sensors, not considered in this iteration.
distributed production systems based on 3d printing.
The Smart Citizen project has being launched in July
2012 on a crowd-funding campaign by Fab Lab
Barcelona, the Institute for Advanced Architecture of
Catalonia, Hangar art production center, and Goteo
crowd-funding platform, and has been successfully
funded to be deployed in Barcelona in 2013.

The Smart Citizen project begins with the assumption

that intelligent cities (or "Smart Cities") must be
produced primarily by intelligent citizens ("Smart
Citizens"). The reason to fund collectively this project
was basically to justify its own goal, if the project would
not have any reception from the citizens then it would
not be possible to develop it. The funds have been use
for the development of the Smart Citizen Kit (SCK):
electronic board and shield based on Arduino (Open
figure 1. First prototype of the Smart Citizen Kit
Hardware) that can capture environmental data and
share it through Internet. It consists of a set of
sensors, battery and WiFi antenna, and can be used by
The sensors available on the Smart Citizen Kit are:
any citizen with no experience in electronics to
- Humidity
understand the performance of its environment and
- Temperature
share it with other citizens. At the same time, the kit
- Nitrogen Dioxide
has been designed will allow advanced users to add
- Carbon Monoxide
features and capabilities, depending on their needs,
- Sound pollution
since is adaptable and customizable according to each
- Solar radiation (Solar Panel as a sensor)
situation.
- Wavelength exposure (WiFi antenna as a sensor)
- Battery charge level.
Hardware main features:
For its first release, the SCK has been designed with a
set of environmental sensors embedded in a shield that
can be attached to the main board. The separation of
the board from the shield allows to other collaborators

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temporal and geo-referenced set of data about the

environmental conditions of streets, tracks or
highways.

The aim of the Smart Citizen Kit is to be continuously

developed by the community of users, which might
design new shields for different applications such as
urban agriculture, indoor air quality, energy and water
consumption, domotics, among many other options of
using the board as a input and output generator.

Beyond the sensors: data and humans

One of the most important features of the project is the
use of an online platform that allows anyone to upload
data that has been captured with the kits to Internet,
figure 2. rendering of the Smart Citizen ambient sensor share that data with other people through social
shield. networks and use them to influence spaces, both
domestic and neighborhood scale. The platform has
been developed in Java and HTML5, using different
This set of sensors has been curated in order to install plugins and libraries such as Leaflet, Open Street Maps,
the kits in outdoors, since the first application will be Cosm, Social Networks APIs, among others. As the
related to public space and streets. In order to install hardware, the platform is open source, and has been
the sensors no extra infrastructure is needed. Each conceived as a growing platform, allowing developers
person will connect its sensor, program it including the to build applications on top of the existing architecture,
network information, and then will install it in her/his or furthermore, adding new features for the
balcony or plaza, by using the internal power source or optimization and the improvement of the existing
a solar panel, depending the case. The main board has platform. The Smart Citizen Platform aims to socialize
been designed to be low consumption, allowing to and humanize the data, making it available to everyone
program different optimization routines, which will online, for free.
allow have different periods of data reading, among
other optimization features. The main board is able to
record offline data in the MicroSD card, which uses the
RTC clock to maintain the temporality of the readings.
The board could be installed in movable entities such as
buses, bikes or cars, and with the installation of a GPS
board and antenna the user would have a permanent

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the industry but from enthusiasts scientists which take

their extra hours to develop technology and then make
it economically available through different crow-
dfunding campaigns, disrupting into the traditional
innovation processes and industries. All these projects
are available online, they are in the cloud, but one
single criticism we can make to them is the lack of
community and localization, in a metaphor: the cloud
does not make it rain on my backyard, or my front
door. The localization of the Smart Citizen project will
allow to create a community of users, in a few
kilometer radius, which can exchange and meet in the
figure 3. screen shot of the Smart Citizen platform beta city, and compare their data or devices in order to
version. improve the project in a larger scale. 200 backers
supported the project in Barcelona through the crowd-
Considerations on platform’s implementation include funding campaign, finished on September 2012;
the ownership of the data. At the moment the data additional kits will be distributed during 2013, and the
architecture of Smart Citizen resides in COSM (former aim is to make them permanently available through
Pachube), which allow the free use of the API for the different open source hardware distribution platforms.
generation of optimized backend processes for data
visualization and sharing. The ownership considerations The project has been directed to Barcelona active
include the distribution of the data in the city, by citizenship (in the first phase), people with interests in
having a distributed version control system of that data the use of open source hardware and software, people
in people’s houses, not centralized. This features will be with ideas to change the productive and management
included in future versions of Smart Citizen. models which operates in the city, and institutions
which want to investigate about new models of city
Locality, making the cloud to rain in my backyard dynamics. The goal is to extend the project beyond
Barcelona city, and make it available to other cities in
There are several projects related with personal data Spain and the world. In 2013, the project will be
collection and sharing, or the Internet of Things, which implemented in Santiago de Chile, Malaga, Lima,
can be reached through the Internet and ordered from Caracas, and other cities of the world.
almost everywhere in the world. Some examples are:
Twine, Ninja Blocks, Air Quality Egg or Sensor Drone; Smart Citizen will be extended to applications involving
all these projects are brilliant examples of the distributed 3D printing and manufacturing, and will add
possibilities of technology today, and how we can options to register resources like Fab Labs, Maker
develop advanced tools that are not only coming from Spaces, Hacker Spaces, MakerBot 3d printers

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(www.makerbot.com/) or RepRap producer and consumer, designer and user. Nowadays

(reprap.org/wiki/RepRa/es), among others, and make we are hybridizing more and more all these concepts,
them available as a service to manufacture in the city, by the introduction of production tools in our everyday
understanding the city as a distributed production lives. Today, every major city has a Fab Lab, a Maker
facility. Space, a Tech Shop or a Hacker Space within its
borders. All these organizations are basically places,
Cities and crisis. The Fab City machines and people available for everyone to make
whatever they want. Fab Labs have been developed
Future development of cities will not only rely on the and curated by MIT and a worldwide network of
Smart City concept. The application of ITC in cities for institutions in all continents (there are around 150 Fab
its optimization has to be closely related with the Labs in 35 countries in the world, doubling next year);
citizen participation, in different scales. The Fab Labs have a curated inventory with digital
appropriation of technology in people’s everyday life is fabrication machines and tools which allows everyone
a reality today, all our communications are based on to share anything within the network, they are
mobile information through the use of smartphones. If equipped with similar equipment and a set of
we look back 20 years behind, we will find out that the components which allow to exchange files in bits format
irruption of ubiquitous communication have created a which actually represent atoms; the network is
new set of relations between people in cities. Today a developing its own university through the Fab
phone is not only a phone, is also a word processor, a Academy, and is designing its own mechanisms of
blog publication tool, a video and photo camera, a regional organization; Fab Labs are organized through
journalism tool, among many other applications we can communities, institutions and other organizations.
find on them. If we can use these tools to create impact Hacker Spaces and Maker Spaces are more free
around us, then the results will be unpredictable. Air organization than the Fab Labs; they are more
quality awareness, sound pollution, fixtures on the community based, and have not content curation, they
streets and public services, efficiency in mobility, etc, serve as platforms for hackers and makers around the
all crowd sourced by the development of tools which world to organize events, workshops and activities.
can be embedded in our existing ones, without having Tech Shops are fabrication facilities, which work in gym
to make major investment on infrastructures, format, in which members pay a monthly fee to have
expensive devices and unknown experts. The cities access to equipment and knowledge to develop design
strategies should be focused to the delivery of and fabrication projects. All these platforms are
platforms for active citizen participation, by the use of providing to anyone the means to make anything
existing technology, and not high-tech fairy tales. anywhere, and are growing in an exponential way in
different countries of the world; these phenomena is
similar to the appearance of personal computers, now
The XXth century industry development created a clear named personal fabrication machines, or fabbers. If we
separation between production and consumption, consider the existing crisis in job creation, and the

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elimination of many traditional entities, which make the

world to exist as we know it, about to collapse, then we
can say that Jeremy Rifkin in The end of work was
right. Rifkin explained in 1995 how the massive
unemployment by the replacement of the work of the
man by the machine, is going to create the conditions
for the reconstruction of society by community based
self-organizations. According to Rifkin this will create
the third sector, which is going to be able to provide
new jobs based on services associated to the
improvement of our everyday life.

The combination of an existing crisis situation in the

western world with the appearance of this new
movement of DIY and DIWO, is creating an ecosystem
for the active participation of citizens in the production
of their cities, using technology as a mean for the
production of wealth. If we are able to produce our own
tools to improve our lives, then we can be the Smart
Citizens.

Studio expected outcome

The workshop will be mainly focus on the explanation

and installation of the Smart Citizen kit, and its
connection with the online platform, both previously
developed by the Smart Citizen leading team.
Additional features in the kit will be allowed, like the
implementation of extra sensors or devices, as well as
the development of apps on top of the existing
platform. All the source files will be available for the
participants.

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Acknowledgements [3] - GERSHENFELD, NEIL A.. Fab: the coming

This article is based on the work developed at Fab Lab revolution on your desktop--from personal computers
to personal fabrication. New York: Basic Books, 2005.
Barcelona, at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of
Print.
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[4] - RIFKIN, JEREMY. The end of work: the decline of
the global labor force and the dawn of the post-market
References era. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995. Print.
[1] - TAPSCOTT, DON. Wikinomics. S.l.: Penguin Usa,
2008. Print. [5] - NOWAK, PETER. Sex, bombs and burgers: how
war, porn and fast food created technology as we know
[2] - MITCHELL, WILLIAM J.. Me++: the cyborg self it. Toronto: Viking Canada, 2010. Print.
and the networked city. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
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