New Identity

For the past decade, we have been dedicated to strengthening manufacturing as a strategy for just and equitable communities. For us, manufacturing has always been about the networks of people, companies, services, resources, and infrastructure that anchor the business of making things. Our goal has long been to foster these networks as a means to generate wealth and economic mobility for workers, small-business owners, and their communities.

As climate shocks intensify and economic systems continue to leave too many people and places behind, we are challenged to move beyond traditional notions of manufacturing built on centralized facilities, high-volume output, and growth at any cost. These models equate expansion with success, profit with progress, and GDP with wellbeing, but in practice they measure little beyond wealth - wealth that cannot shield people from inequality, disruption, or instability.

In response, we are sunsetting Urban Manufacturing Alliance to become Mechanism. Over the next decade, we will move from serving the manufacturing sector as an intermediary to working with communities as a guide and convener, building production ecosystems rooted in relationships, governance, and flows of value that define how production happens, who participates, and who benefits.

This shift is essential. Left on autopilot, today’s economy treats climate change, ecological limits, and human wellbeing as externalities, exposing people and places to constant disruption. We must replace this shortsightedness with systems that honor the interdependence of people, place, and planet to ensure that production serves life now and in future generations.