In quest of implementing degrowth in local urban planning policies

Abstract

This paper focuses on the intersection between degrowth and urban planning and contributes to a deeper understanding and a sharper concretisation of how a strong sustainability concept such as degrowth can be taken into planning practice. Taking the Swedish municipality of Södertälje as a case, this paper uses empirical material from interviews with municipal urban planners and urban planning policy. The findings put current planning in relation to degrowth ideas, gather insights about the possible role of planning actors in a degrowth transition, and includes proposals for how planning practice can facilitate a degrowth future. This study finds that integrating a degrowth approach in planning practice means that urban planning needs to be subordinated to overarching social and environmental goals. Producing urban planning that is measured and conditioned by overarching goals would most likely imply completely different ways of planning, and goal-oriented backcasting scenarios are suggested as a tool to overcome this challenge. This paper also gathers strategies, like Södertälje's Cultivation Strategy, that can facilitate a degrowth transition within current planning practice.

The Shrinking City as a Testing Ground for Urban Degrowth Practices

“…The first, reduction in production and consumption, is based on the related core principle of degrowth (Demaria et al, 2013). A shift to local production and consumption (Ruiz-Alejos & Prats, 2022) is a feature of the frequently mentioned practice of urban farming or gardening (De Castro Mazarro et al, 2023;Ruiz-Alejos & Prats, 2022;Varvarousis & Koutrolikou, 2018).…”

Urbanizing degrowth: Five steps towards a Radical Spatial Degrowth Agenda for planning in the face of climate emergency

“…Similar to Xue and Kębłowski (2022), this SI also focuses on what planners can learn from degrowth, but does not expand to an exploration of what the degrowth movement can learn from alternative institutional planning practices and from insurgent planners, architects, and other urban professionals. A notable exception to this is a recent article by Ruiz-Alejos and Prats (2022) that explores (through a case study in Södertälje, Sweden) how planning actors can pioneer degrowth futures.…”

From Circular Economy to Circular Society

“…Sustainable Circular Cities and vulnerable populations to make space for infrastructure that benefits the interests of capital such as upscale real estate, malls, shipping warehouses and airports (Ferreira and von Schönfeld, 2020;Ruiz-Alejos and Prats, 2021;Savini, 2021b;Spanier and Feola, 2022). In the same manner, zoning, and planning have been used to push unwanted developments in poor areas, thereby replicating territorial patterns of environmental injustice (Agyeman and Evans, 2004;Derickson, 2014;Harvey, 2012;Martinez-Alier, 2021a;Shah et al, 2018).…”

“…Nevertheless, there are other forms of planning, that subordinate economic growth to social needs and ecological imperatives (Delgado Ramos, 2015;Escobar, 2019;Ferreira and von Schönfeld, 2020;Ruiz-Alejos and Prats, 2021;Savini, 2021b;Spanier and Feola, 2022). Despite some strong social and ecological narratives, no city from our case studies embraced these approaches to break free from the contradictions and injustices brought about by growthfocussed urban planning.…”

“…Consumption limits can also be established by protecting and restoring biodiversity through policies like setting limits to land artificialisation, prohibiting the destruction of arable land, establishing strict protection of green corridors and belts, creating conservation areas, 190 banning extractive activities, and replacing grey infrastructure with green infrastructure (by transforming parking lots, roads, and highways into gardens and parks, creating green roofs and walls, greening public areas etc.) (Dushkova and Haase, 2020;Haluza-DeLay and Berezan, 2013;Hong et al, 2014;Ruiz-Alejos and Prats, 2021;Savini, 2021b;Wang et al, 2012). These policies not only improve the health of urban ecosystems but also deliver a plurality of ecosystem services such as flood protection, heat attenuation, air purification, carbon sequestration, food production, improved mental and physical wellbeing and connection with nature etc.…”