Fab City Index
Compared to the main Western economies, France appears to be particularly impacted by the phenomenon of deindustrialization. Many areas are experiencing a sharp decline in production and manufacturing jobs. As a corollary, a growing share of household consumption depends on manufactured goods from more or less distant territories.
It should be remembered that two-thirds of French imports are made up of manufactured products and that foreign trade in this type of product has been in deficit for the last ten years. Moreover, this dependence on goods “made in the rest of the world” is reflected in a massive phenomenon of relocation of environmental impacts to producer countries. Relying on the extraction and transformation of natural resources – fossil fuels, metals, biomass, etc. – the Group’s activities are based on the extraction and transformation of natural resources. – Based on the extraction and transformation of natural resources – fossil fuels, metals, biomass, etc. – the manufacture of manufactured goods is at the heart of the main environmental challenges: climate change, scarcity of resources, loss of biodiversity, etc.
Therefore, how can we demonstrate that local manufacturing is not a romantic and backward-looking proposal tinged with protectionism but, quite the opposite, a strong factor of development and openness to the world and its future?
Unique of its kind, FAB CITY INDEX allows the calculation of the manufacturing autonomy index of a territory, a city. Thanks to this powerful method, we can read the articulations and interactions of actor-manufacturers-actors at a very fine scale, that of a city.
Presented at the Fab City Summit 2018, the first analysis was carried out on French cities. Since then, FAB CITY INDEX has been refined to be as close and accurate as possible to the expectations of a territory or a city. It is an ideal way to co-construct a territorial strategy with a macro vision of economic, social and ecological issues.