Library

By: Wojciech Kębłowski

Degrowth offers a particularly trans-disciplinary and robust critique of growth-driven configurations of space, society and economy. However, its proponents are yet to seriously engage with urban environments by clearly outlining how, where, for whom and under what conditions the principles of degrowth could be applied in urban contexts. In this article, I focus on transport as a vehicle for un...

By: Marlyne Sahakian, Manisha Anantharaman, Czarina Saloma

Answering the call in this special issue to spatialise degrowth studies beyond the Global North, this paper examines practices of ‘park-making’ in Chennai and Metro Manila as a potential degrowth pathway. Parks in the coastal mega cities of Metro Manila and Chennai can be seen as relics of a colonial era, and spaces coherent with capitalist, growth-oriented and consumerist logics. At the same t...

By: William Otchere-Darko

Focusing on the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 and the New Urban Agenda, this commentary suggests that by engaging with degrowth, these mainstream policies can potentially provide alternative ecological values as climate responses. In turn, degrowth can also benefit from engaging with the multiple scales and sectors of these institutions for climate and planning practice. However, such multi-scala...

By: Wolfgang Wende, Alejandro De Castro Mazarro, Ritu George Kaliaden, Markus Egermann

For spatial practices such as architecture, urban design and planning, degrowth remains an abstract concept, as there is no clear alignment of its principles into spatial strategies. To bridge this gap, this paper examines how degrowth can be operationalised into sustainable spatial practices. Through a review of more than 200 sustainable spatial projects across the world operating at the build...

By: Seth Schindler, J Miguel Kanai, Javier Diaz Bay

Cities in low- and middle-income countries have experienced deindustrialisation as localised agglomerations that historically served domestic and regional markets have become exposed to highly productive global value chains as capital has been (re)allocated to primary sectors. State, corporate and social actors have responded to economic decline by embracing a range of coping and adaptation str...

By: Jonathan Barth, Raphael Kaufmann, Lasse Steffens, Laure-Alizée Le Lannou, Alexandra Gerer, Sebastian Kiecker

This report investigates how reinforcing dynamics between political prioritisation in governance and statistical and data-related qualities of metrics give rise to an institutional GDP lock-in, which inhibits a mainstreaming of wellbeing and sustainability in policymaking. Building on this lock-in analysis, the report illuminate levers for strengthening the consideration of wellbeing and sustainability variables in political governance and statistical frameworks.

By: Federico Demaria, Angelos Varvarousis, Hug March, Maria Kaika

We call for coupling degrowth with urban studies and planning agendas as an academically salient and politically urgent endeavour. Our aim is threefold: to explore ways for ‘operationalising’ degrowth concepts into urban and regional everyday spatial practices; to sketch pathways for taking degrowth conceptually and methodologically beyond localised experiments and inform larger scale planning ...

By: Obervatoire de la post-croissance et de la décroissance

- 20 ans de décroissance Alice CANABATE, Jean-Claude BESSON-GIRARD et Agnès SINAIHommage à Entropia Serge LATOUCHEVingt ans de décroissance : Quel bilan ? Michel LEPESANTPortrait du décroissant en militant-chercheur Vincent LIEGEYUn projet de décroissance : controverses, débats et convergences Caroline GOLDBLUMFrançoise d’Eaubonne, à l’origine de la pensée écoféministe Michel LEPESANTJ’ai...

By: Martin François, Sybille Mertens de Wilmars, Kevin Maréchal

Preventing the increase of economic inequality in a non-growing economy is a major challenge. In post-growth research, scholars agree that reducing the income and assets of the wealthy must be part of any strategy for reducing inequality. Nevertheless, caps on wealth and income remain surprisingly under-researched. After discussing the role of these caps in post-growth transformation, this pape...

By: Dougal McNeill

Book review of Kohei Saito’s 'Marx in the Anthropocene', by Dougal McNeill

By: Mark H Burton

Book review of Kohei Saito's 'Marx in the Anthropocene', by Mark Burton

By: Fabian Maier

Degrowth by design, not disaster. So goes the rallying cry and predicament of the eponymous movement, which is not only gaining traction through comprehensive critiques of hegemonic formations of economic growth, but also by evoking alternative imaginaries to overcome them. Nevertheless, as the costs of endless growth become ever more apparent, politicians and corporations with vested interests double-down on tossing more oil to the fire of a burning planet with increasingly authoritarian measures. While consequences of such reckless business-as-usual strategies can be felt for many already in the here and now, the odds appear to be stacked against any counter-hegemonic aspirations trying to reverse the freight train heading full speed towards disaster. It is on this detrimental conjuncture on which the emerging degrowth movement is articulating aspirations of designing strategies towards systemic change to enable more desirable futures. Despite offering critical diagnoses of the status quo, the polyphonic discourse has thus far failed to identify and articulate strategic pathways that could bring about envisaged degrowth societies. This publication is trying to alleviate this ‘strategic indeterminism’ by putting degrowth ideas to work in crafting avenues towards a radical emancipatory socio-ecological transformation.

By: Jorge Garcia-Arias, Silvina Corbetta, Bruno Baronnet

By: Victor Beker

By: Randall Wray, Yeva Nersisyan

By: Luca Calafati, Karel Williams

By: Kate Bayliss, Ben Fine

By: Timothée Parrique, Inês Cosme, Nick Fitzpatrick

By: Ashish Kothari

This framework on radical alternatives proposes that alternatives are built on the following key elements or spheres, interconnected and overlapping in a ‘Flower of Transformation’: ecological integrity and resilience, including the conservation of nature and natural diversity, maintenance of ecological functions, respect for ecological limits (local to global), and ecological ethics in all ...

By: Louison Cahen-Fourot

In the perspective of a social-ecological transformation, this article sets the discussion on the future of central banking back in the context of ecological limits to growth. It first surveys the literature on proposals to introduce sustainability in central banking. It then draws from the conceptualization of money as a social relation to discuss central banks’ mandates, independence, governa...