Open workshops and post-growth economies: collaborative places as forerunners of transformative economic developments?

Degrowth debates have recently paid attention to so called, Open Workshops", e.g. bicycle repair shops, Repair Cafes, FabLabs and others, aiming at better understanding of open innovation processes. The discursive scenery adds further spatial typologies to the debate such as Living Labs, Real Laboratories and FabLabs. Against the dominating growth paradigms of many regional economic approaches, a very lively transdisciplinary debate seeking to cover new and alternative concepts of post-growth production processes can be observed. From the perspective of human and economic geography, the case of, Open Workshops", demonstrates that there is no single paradigmatic shift towards one sustainable economy, but various contingents and case-specific economic developments. Focusing on the procedural transformative dimension, the capability to response to distinct problems and to design procedural solutions in peer-group thematic communities is more important than the factual material dimension saving various types of material goods and energy resources.