Boston

Boston is one of the four bioregional pilots in PLANETAI, alongside Barcelona, Santiago de Chile, and Bali. Within the program's pilot stratification it is currently classified P1 — meaning a strong institutional anchor and methodology partnership, with the community sensor fleet to be co-designed during the pilot itself rather than inheriting an existing deployment.

The pilot is anchored on Fab Foundation as institutional host (the Foundation's permanent global HQ opened in summer 2025 as Fab Hub Kendall at 325 Main Street, Cambridge), MIT CBA (Center for Bits and Atoms, Neil Gershenfeld's lab) as the methodology partner, and FAB26 + Fab City Summit (27–31 July 2026, Cambridge MA — biennial global gathering of the Fab Lab network) as the natural project launch event sitting in the first quarter of grant execution.

The pilot's distinctive role within the network is methodology partnership through MIT CBA's distributed-manufacturing research programme, operational anchoring through Fab Foundation's network-scale data (the global Fab Lab registry, FabAcademy alumni records, the Academany portfolio), and Boston-region sensor co-design distributed across Somerville / Cambridge / Boston-area Fab Lab partners.

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Analyze Boston (data.boston.gov). City of Boston open-data portal. ~200 datasets covering 311 service requests, building permits, employee earnings, food inspections, traffic, public safety. CKAN-based.

MassGIS (mass.gov/orgs/massgis). Massachusetts state geospatial data: parcels, buildings, transit network, hydrography, environmental constraints, election districts. Bulk download via state portal + ArcGIS REST services.

Fab Foundation network data. Global Fab Lab registry, FabAcademy alumni records, Academany completion data — network-scale data for the pilot and cross-pilot.

MIT CBA research data. Primarily research outputs (digital fabrication, additive manufacturing, voxelisation) rather than municipal data. Useful as a methodology layer for the federated AI architecture, less useful as a direct H₀-T signal source.

These are the questions where partner input is most welcome — sensor-fleet design, named technical lead, FAB26 programme integration.

• Sensor fleet build-out — locus of co-design. v18 names a Boston community sensor fleet to be built during the pilot. Open question on governance: is Fab Hub Kendall the central anchor for sensor co-design, or does that work distribute across Somerville / Cambridge / Boston-area Fab Lab partners? Different governance implications. Worth explicit confirmation with Sherry Lassiter (Fab Foundation) and the Boston-area Fab Lab community.
• MIT CBA technical lead. Gershenfeld is the institutional anchor; the named technical lead doing the day-to-day pilot work needs to be confirmed jointly with CBA before pilot kickoff. CBA's 2025 research output spans multiple postdoctoral and PhD-level researchers — partner input on the right counterpart is welcome.
• FAB26 programme integration. What role does FAB26 (27–31 July 2026) play in launching the Boston pilot? Hub Toolkit workshop? Pilot-team in-person convening? Public deliverable showcase? Format being co-designed with Sherry Lassiter (Fab Foundation) and the FAB26 organising committee.
• Analyze Boston cadence + depth check. Which specific community-throughput datasets are published at the resolution H₀-T needs (sub-annual, district-level)? Worth a focused conversation with the Boston open-data team before kickoff. MassGIS coverage at the regional tier is comprehensive and well-documented; the city tier is the question.
• Boston-area Fab Lab partners — community map. Beyond Fab Hub Kendall as the central node, which Boston / Somerville / Cambridge labs join the pilot? Joint scoping with Fab Foundation through the Fab Academy alumni network.

Drafted from the working-notes brief; partner pushback on any of these is the point of this page.

The Boston pilot anchors on Fab Hub Kendall as the operational locus and partners with MIT CBA as the methodology layer. Three pivots:

First, build instrumentation around Fab Hub Kendall as the central node, with sensor co-design distributed across Somerville / Cambridge / Boston-area Fab Lab partners as the deployment scales. This mirrors the network's "hub as harvester + sensor-campaign operator + local-intelligence instantiator" model with Boston-specific partner topology.

Second, use FAB26 + Fab City Summit (27–31 July 2026) as the natural project launch event — convene the four pilot teams in person, run the Hub Toolkit workshop (translated from CENTRINNO substrate, see Barcelona pilot), lock the deployment plan for months 4–12. The FAB26 dates fall inside the first quarter of grant execution; the in-person window is one of the most efficient coordination opportunities of the project.

Third, leverage Fab Foundation's network-scale data (registry, Academy alumni, Academany completion records) for cross-pilot Tier-1 / Tier-2 Node deployment work — making Boston the institutional hinge between the four-pilot programme and the wider 2,700+ Fab Lab network.

The pilot's distinctive contribution is institutional reach: Boston is the only pilot that sits at the global Fab Foundation HQ, hosts the network's biennial gathering inside the project window, and brings MIT CBA's methodology lineage. Land it through Sherry Lassiter (Fab Foundation) + a named CBA technical lead + Anna Kaziunas France (Academany) + a named Boston open-data counterpart.