Making sustainability transitions in collaborative spaces of making: Exploring opportunities and limitations in Turin.

In recent years, makerspaces and FabLabs have proliferated in urban settings. Such venues provide shared workspace, (digital fabrication) tools, and knowledge, lowering the barriers for citizens to engage in DIY (Do It Yourself), and the design and building of artefacts. In recent years, scholars have hailed the return of small-scale manufacturing, independent craft production and making practices to cities. This shift is by some seen as pre-figuring a more progressive and inclusive discourse on urban development, one that is attentive to local communities' productive needs and opportunities, and that moves us away from the hitherto dominant consumption-centred paradigm of the creative city (Carr & Gibson, 2016; Grodach, 2017; Grodach et al., 2017). Drawing on empirical data collected in Turin in 2021, the paper investigates how and under what conditions community-led spaces centred on making may hold potential as sites of urban vitalism, reconfiguring production and consumption in more democratic, inclusive and sustainable ways. The findings consider a number of emerging tensions, relating to questions of regulating open access, managing community participation, and negotiating project-based versus changing habitual practices. • The paper considers the potential and limitations for sustainability transitions in open community-based spaces of making • It offers insights into how these spaces effect positive societal impacts through making • The paper considers a number of emerging tensions, relating to questions of open access regulation, community participation management, and project-based negotiation versus habitual practices change [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]