This paper asks what is envisaged for being in a post growth world. It stems from the observation that in calling for a transformation of human relations in almost every sphere of action, post growth and degrowth, are in some way talking about a transformation of human being. For example, according to Savini (2024, p. 4) โDegrowth envisions a shift in the social norms that sustain the...
Urban planning has operated for over a century as the primary instrument of urban development, fundamentally equating development with growth (Pizzo 2023a, b, c; Savini et al. 2022, Rydin 2022; Xue, 2022). As we confront escalating environmental and social challenges, this traditional approach faces increasing scrutiny. While new theoretical frameworks emphasizing sufficiency, reduction, and...
Modern urban planning was born and consolidated as a means of managing, and thereby facilitating, urban and economic growth. The recent shift to the pursuit of โsustainableโ or โgreenโ growth still accepts this basic orientation. Today, emergent, โdegrowthโ and โpost-growthโ planning are instead fundamentally questioning the focus on enabling growth, in whatever form, following the...
Although acritically reported as steadily galloping for the next decades, based on recent trends, global urbanisation is not exempt from either physico-ecological and social issues and related limits, just like the well-known ones dealt with by Meadows et al. (1972) and by Hirsch (1976). As a matter of fact, natural systems follow pulsing paradigms (Odum et al., 1995), with successions of...
Post-growth urban planning has in recent years begun to redefine urban development by foregrounding objectives beyond economic growth and towards social and ecological wellbeing. However, this emerging field has not yet considered the cultural politics that we argue are crucial in facilitating such a significant shift. This is particularly evident in the significant sociocultural and political...
Urban metabolic risk refers to the cumulative negative impacts of urban metabolism, which undermine quality of life and create significant challenges for urban regeneration initiatives. In the context of post-growth urbanism, this concept offers a lens to explore how urban metabolisms can be reconfigured to sustain ecological balance and social equity, moving beyond growth-driven models of...
Ecopolis. What does a post-growth city may look like?
In the second decade of the century, Espon, the European Agency for territorial studies, conducted scenario studies on the future of the European city, examining three major scenarios respectively named: Metropolis, Metapolis and Ecopolis. We consider that study still valid but currently it seems to have a weaker meaning as Espon aimed...
Caring for a garden bed along the street, where neighbors happily pick your herbs, may seem unimaginable for most urban inhabitants. However, in Sydney, Australia, public gardening practices have emerged, transforming bare public patches along roadsides into vibrant green spaces. By reimagining public space as a place for collective ecological and social regeneration, these practices challenge...
Gross domestic product (GDP) is an important variable used to compare regions and countries as a welfare indicator. But is GDP everything? Post-growth and de-growth approaches criticize the idea that solely focus on GDP growth. These alternative approaches, based on the unsustainability of unlimited growth, seek ways to ensure welfare, and sustainability and to conserve resources beyond...
This paper discusses the socio-economic and environmental deprivation patterns across provinces in Turkey by applying the English Index of Deprivation framework. In this study, data from TURKSTAT were used to assess disparities and determine the prime areas that need development interventions. The research underlines notable regional disparities by analyzing seven domains: income, employment,...
The circular economy (CE) has emerged as a sustainability prominent framework, garnering attention from scholars and policymakers and influencing the policies of cities and regions. However, urban and regional CE strategies tend to focus predominantly on โlooping actionsโ (see Williams, 2021), such as using waste as a resource and reducing resource consumption. This approach often neglects the...
Over the past years, the concept of circularity has gained considerable momentum in spatial planning as part of the broader transition predicated upon resource efficiency, climate change mitigation and the promise of an economic makeover. With cities and regions envisaged as frontrunners of the circular transition, the turn to spatial planning came as a natural step in problematizing the role...
At a time when climate change is showing its destructive force, with record high temperatures and environmental catastrophes, we need to look for an alternative approach to the current one that rethinks cities as living organisms and optimises processes rather than products, paying close attention to the management of urban flows so as to develop a more efficient urban metabolism.
In urban...
The escalating challenges posed by resource depletion, urban sprawl, and socio-spatial fragmentation demand a rethinking of urban systems. While the circular economy (CE) has emerged as a paradigm to decouple economic growth from resource consumption, its urban applications often reduce circularity to technocratic resource management, neglecting the spatial and social intricacies of everyday...
The circular economy is increasingly regarded as a crucial strategy for mitigating resource scarcity and improving waste management in cities, becoming an important factor for urban and regional development. However, many implementation processes overlook an important aspect: the spatial dimension of circularity. Scholars have begun to advocate for โcircular cities,โ proposing frameworks that...
In recent decades, growing pressure on the planet's resources has sparked increasing concerns about sustainability and the need to mitigate the effects of human activities. To address these challenges, circular economy practices have emerged, focusing on reducing the over-exploitation of raw materials and extending the life cycle of products. The trade in second-hand clothing exemplifies this...
At a time when the ecological destructiveness of urbanization and its contribution to environmental problems is widely recognized in mainstream discourse, Urban Political Ecology (UPE) offers a crucial critique of urban design and planning. UPE challenges these practices to align with agendas prioritizing social equity. Even ecological urbanists, despite focusing on sustainability, face...
The paper explores regional gap scenarios balancing society-economy-environment domains amidst escalating uncertainties. The study exemplifies multiscale peripherisation of Estonia at EU external borders, with a strong impact on the urban system of depopulation, green deal, and the geostrategic security agenda. The latter has still been understated and remote in regional and cohesion research...
Research context
City-Port Areas (CPA) can be defined as multi-risk exposed environments characterized by high-complexity (Hein, 2016, 2018, 2023) and facing diverse intertwined challenges related to overlapping environmental, natural and anthropic risks. They are the first to experience the impact of climate change, being affected by resource scarcity and linear urban metabolism processes,...
As we globally experience a daily hyper-acceleration of multiple crises and with 2024 being the first recorded year of the Earth's average temperature crossing the 1,5 ยฐC boundary set by the Paris Agreement, the inadequacy of such global strategies has been unequivocally recognized. In the face of this stagnant situation, the change of the capitalist system is increasingly recognized as the...
In the face of climate change, planning scholars and practitioners have challenged โconventional growth-driven development modelsโ (track 1: post-growth urbanism) and opened the search for adaptation planning practices that could foreground planning futures beyond growth. In this attempt, stakeholder collaboration across public, private, non-profit, and philanthropic sectors has become...
The article investigates how (bio-)regional identity mediates the rearrangement of urban-rural relations in the planning of sustainable regional economies. It researches the issue of identity within the emergent field of degrowth urban and planning studies. Degrowth scholarship largely neglect the issue of identity and can be accused to run the risk of co-option by far-right ideologies....
The present research investigates the relationship between transport acceleration projects and growth-based development strategies and subsequently compares these with the emergence of opposing trends in the possibility of post-growth urbanism.
The rhetoric surrounding the effects of infrastructure on territorial development has long been a subject of debate among scholars (Plassard, 1990;...
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly reshaped urban and rural dynamics, challenging the conventional urban growth paradigm and accelerating counter-urbanization. This shift has profound implications for postgrowth urbanism, which advocates for an alternative to growth-driven urban development, emphasizing ecological balance, sustainability, and social equity. Counter-urbanization, initially...
This contribution raises a reflection on the planning of the so-called inner areas, in which depopulation, emigration, social and productive rarefaction, abandonment of the land, are distinctive phenomena. Shaping a new role for inner areas requires forms of community and the arising of new subjectivities that rely on forms of direct democracy (Magnaghi, 2020), reconstructing the places of...
The development of urban infrastructures and services has historically followed a growth-oriented, path-dependent model, particularly in medium- and small-sized municipalities in peripheral European regions (Kirkpatrick & Smith, 2011; Nรฆss, 2006). This trajectory, often reinforced by structural and economic changes linked to European Union integration, faces increasing challenges from...
Urban sprawl has long been a debated phenomenon within the context of growing cities and regions. The indicators, causes, and consequences of urban sprawl, as well as the policies developed to address sprawl development, have predominantly been discussed in the framework of growing urban areas (Couch et al., 2005). On the other hand, studies on the increasingly prominent topic of shrinking...
The paper aims to address the issue of post-growth urbanism in low-density and marginalised contexts, where both the urban and the economy have not grown for a long time but where public administrations and citizens are unable to think of different interventions beyond growth.
The paper opens with a consideration of the definition of the study context, distinguishing between less favoured...
Amid escalating planetary crises, postgrowth urbanism emerges as a critical paradigm shift, challenging traditional planning models by prioritizing ecological balance, social equity, and community well-being over relentless economic expansion. This paper investigates the adaptive reuse of industrial heritage as a transformative tool for advancing sustainable urban futures. Focusing on regions...
As cities move beyond growth-focused models, the connection between urban texture and human scale offers a clear way to design spaces that put people first. Historically, urban growth has often prioritized economic expansion and infrastructural development, leading to dense and sprawling urban forms. While this growth facilitated economic wealth and connectivity, it frequently resulted in the...
Post-growth planning is a call for focusing on wellbeing and health while staying within the planetary boundaries in a long-term perspective. We observe an increasing academic interest in the connections between post-growth or degrowth and infrastructure planning in academia, and now also in practice in countries such as the Netherlands. Infrastructure providers themselves are publicly...
Designing and planning the retreat of urban areas where needed is an alien concept for the urban planning and design realm. Spatialization of degrowth within post-growth urbanism context is also a relatively new pursuit. The built environment of cities once produced as solutions to specific problems within a specific climate is now facing problems as the results of previous erasโ solutions and...
This research aims to examine the potential role of planned retreat strategies in the socio-ecological transition of Italian coastal areas, in light of the challenges posed by the contemporary post-growth context.
In Italy, the phase of intense economic growth that characterised the second half of the twentieth century coincided with widespread urbanisation, often occurring in the absence of...
This research responds to a planning exception for urban heritage sites in China, in which, differentiated from the mainstream pro-growth ideologies, socio-cultural sustainability has been declared as a priority over economic growth. This planning exception suggests the potential that urban heritage sites have in encouraging urban planners to embrace post-growth ideas in China, which have not...
This paper examines the transformation of the NGBG community space in Malmรถ, Sweden. Originally established as a grassroots music festival eight years ago, it is now a key cultural hub fostering creativity and civic engagement. In the rapidly gentrifying SofieLund neighbourhood, NGBG faces mounting pressures as the city enforces a sound-free zone and implements a master urban plan for 2040,...
Following four decades of reform, China has lifted millions out of poverty. However, the social costs of the countryโs growth-oriented agenda have long been scrutinised, with phenomena such as rapid urbanisation being one of the most transformative forces in this process. Under the umbrella of urban regeneration and quality of life improvements, state-led projects have been criticised for...
This paper proposes an environmental conservation perspective to address multi-dimensional socio-environmental problems across various spatial scales by incorporating โBiodiversity Impact Chain Analysis (BIC)โ (Bรผscher et al., 2022) into planning. The โBiodiversity Impact Chainโ (BIC) analysis offers a methodological framework that aims to unveil the biodiversity losses and socio-ecological...
In an era of unprecedented ecological challenges and systemic urban transformation, the concept of degrowth has emerged as a critical paradigm for reimagining spatial planning and urban development (Kallis et al., 2018). Traditional urban planning models, fundamentally rooted in continuous economic expansion and resource extraction, have increasingly demonstrated their limitations in...
The concept of "sustainability" is no longer sufficient in an era where planetary boundaries have been breached. The 1.5ยฐC global warming limit has already been exceeded in certain regions, signaling irreversible climate impacts. The take-make-dispose linear economy, which ties development to the relentless consumption of virgin resources, is unsustainable in the face of escalating...
The urban post-growth agenda critiques growth-driven urban planning by emphasizing ecological limits, social equity, and sustainable spatial organization (Schmid, 2022). It advocates transitioning away from economic growth dependency to sustainable governance. Globally, urbanization fosters economic activity but exacerbates environmental degradation and inequality. In Turkey, where the "urban...
In our research, we started looking at community ownership as specifically geographically defined communities having democratic control and ownership over land and buildings. In line with their long-term stewardship role, community landowners manage properties and dedicate their surpluses for the benefit of residents, other occupiers, as well as the wider community, and the environment....
The debate on shrinking cities illustrates the idea of growth dependency of urban development. The growth theory rewards places with particular neoliberal economy features. Big metropolitan areas have intensified, while smaller cities lacking those features are left behind, which creates geographic winners and losers. That reality highlights another common outcome from population decline:...
Canadian cities are consistently characterized as low-density, dispersed and decentralized, largely due to the pervasiveness of car-oriented development and policies that encourage urban sprawl (Bunting et al., 2007; Talmage & Frederick, 2019). This has cemented Canadaโs profile as a โsuburban nationโ (Gordon & Janzen, 2013), which is particularly true in โmid-sizedโ Canadian cities...
Currently, 40% of the population in Europe already lives in a shrinking region, where shrinking means population decline and/or aging. This especially impacts rural regions, where natural decline and continued urbanization accelerate even more shrinking in these areas. Complex policy challenges arise from this development (ESPON 2020), such as labor market shortages, fiscal sustainability,...
According to data from the European Environment Agency (EEA 2023), Poland is among the leading countries in the rapid transformation of undeveloped areas into residential development. Between 2012 and 2018, it ranked second in Europe in terms of the amount of agricultural, forest, and pastureland converted for housing purposes. These figures significantly exceeded those recorded in Western...
In the years and decades following WWII, global energy and resource consumption were unleased on a hitherto unseen scale. The fields of earth system science, history, and planetary health continue to grapple with the causes and consequences of this โGreat Accelerationโ โ a proposed entry point into the Anthropocene. For its part, the profession of planning is yet struggling to put into an...
The territorial scale is the most relevant and visible testing ground for the current ecological transition, given its systemic character as a complex interface of environment and society. In the context of post-growth planning strategies and policies, territorial design assumes a crucial role as a tool for implementing and realizing the transition itself. Non-metropolitan regions, and...
Bruno Latour (2017) described how we are now in a new climate regime, where there is no longer a safe โhomeโ and we are all migrants and nomads. He emphasizes the need to confront the climate crisis, even as certain political forces seek to ignore it, close borders, and maintain the status quo. Persisting with business-as-usual, as depicted in scientific graphs, leads to catastrophe.
The...
The global agrifood system is one of the primary drivers of climate change, ecological disasters, and rural decline. These threats necessitate urgent action in climate change mitigation efforts, making it imperative to reconsider the role of urban planning in food provision. In the post-growth metabolism era, redefining the interconnections within the food chainโparticularly between productive...
Collective domains embody the self-determination of local communities, sustaining subsistence economies integral to agrosilvopastoral systems and the governance of mountain land. Historically situated between formal and informal institutions, they have preserved socio-ecological balance in fragile yet resource-rich areas. While they are typical institutions all over the Mediterranean and...
Approximately fifteen years after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), land use planning practices worldwide have shown limited evolution, even in regions deeply affected by austerity measures and reduced public spending. Furthermore, critical research on the interplay between crisis, austerity, and urban dynamics often neglects the domain of land use planning, leaving a gap in addressing the...
The debate on Planning Theory between Savini (2024a, 2024b) and Rydin (2024) raises critical questions regarding three key issues: how degrowth can gain political legitimacy, what role planners should assume in this process, and what practical pathways can facilitate the transition toward degrowth-oriented economies. By analyzing these perspectives and incorporating insights from studies on...
Urban areas play a pivotal role in shaping global social, ecological, and economic trends, yet the continuous drive for growth often results in residual, blight, leftover, and neglected spaces in various typologies. Such spaces include old industrial areas, abandoned infrastructures, vacant parcels, wild spaces, and interstitial landscapes like undeveloped land or meadows (Cariello, Ferorelli,...
Cities are increasingly facing irreversible climate impacts. Meanwhile cities are responsible for a large share of global resource extraction and energy use, accounting for about 67โ76% of global energy use (IPCC, 2023). The built environments, including materials, buildings, infrastructure and urban systems, drive a significant portion of this demand, consuming approximately 40% of raw...
The linkage of degrowth and planning has been increasingly acknowledged in the last few years, not only for the sake of facilitating degrowth transition, but also for the transition of urban planning into a practice better aligned with the socio-ecological needs of todayโs world (Xue, 2021; Xue and Kฤbลowski, 2022). Literature on urban degrowth provides key principles of spatial organization...
This paper explores the potential for a counter-hegemonic circular economy, grounded in a degrowth-planning program that prioritizes sufficiency and reduced material consumption. We investigate how the self-management of labour (autogestione) shapes workersโ sense of self and their relationship to ecology and the production process. To do so, we engage with the concept of subjectivity in...
