ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief overview of some of the narratives and claims made in the literature surrounding the maker movement and their suggested transformative potential. Makerspaces are seen as alternative social spaces that bring a new transformative potential to urban social life. Makerspaces clearly constitute new urban meeting places that enable the coming together of diverse urban dwellers. The attention given to makerspaces arguably has its origins in the more established peer-to-peer practices within software development, whose affordances and demands have enabled new forms of organisation and production processes. Makerspaces and their 3D printers seem like the latest iteration of the frequently recurring story where a new machine is envisioned to come upon the stage of capitalism to resolve its difficult plot situations. The chapter discusses the maker movement as it has played out in Milan. Urban governance in Milan has been characterised by the significant and widespread involvement of civil society compared to other Italian cities.
