Maintaining autonomy: Urban degrowth and the commoning of housing

Abstract

The theory – and practice – of establishing autonomy from the hegemony of growth is central to the imaginary of degrowth. Yet to envisage pathways towards a degrowth society, scholars need to explain how autonomy coalesces into autonomous institutions. This article addresses this institutional challenge of how to secure autonomy in the provision of collective, affordable and decommodified housing in cities. Building on the tradition of autonomist and (post-)workerist thought, it conceptualises this challenge as one of maintenance. It argues that autonomy occurs through its perpetual reproduction, which is made possible by nesting and federating practices among autonomous communities. Nesting and federating practices allow these communities to avoid becoming enclaves and co-optation by market logics. The article illustrates these arguments through reference to the struggles of de Nieuwe Meent, a recent housing commoning project in Amsterdam.

Housing movement coalitions in the United States: Trends from big networks among urban civil society leaders

“…More broadly, this study suggests a strategy for dynamically tracking any civil society coalition of interest to researchers (Diani, 2015). As such, researchers may use the methods described in this study widely, whether to evaluate federations of environmentalists (Savini, 2023), coalitions of LGBT+ urban activists (Ghaziani, 2021), or even the overall structure of coalitions in urban civil society as they evolve in different cities.…”

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

“…She critically examines whether these practices led to better or worse housing conditions, inequality, and increased or decreased carbon production. Also in this SI, Savini (2022) highlights the importance of institutions in scaling up degrowth potentials. He argues that degrowth scholarship praises the housing commons, but does not examine under which particular institutional conditions housing commoning could ensure long term degrowth practices.…”

“…While our special issue was under review, another volume on 'Post-growth Planning: Cities beyond the Market Economy' was being developed. Edited by Savini et al (2022), the volume makes a significant contribution. It shares some of the research objectives of this issue but focuses mainly on the physical characteristics that a postgrowth future may take (in housing, mobility, food, etc.).…”

“…Critical urban scholarship for its part has thus far engaged with degrowth debates mostly in an arbitrary, non-analytical manner. While some urban scholars quote degrowth as a potential inspiration for imagining alternative urban socio-environmental futures, there is no systematic exploration of what an urban degrowth agenda might look like, with a handful of recent notable exceptions, which we shall explore in the next section (Demaria et al, 2019;Savini, 2021;Savini et al, 2022;Xue and Ke ˛b1owski, 2022).…”

What if there were a moratorium on new housebuilding? An exploratory study with London-based housing associations

“…In this framework, the housing crisis becomes a crisis of distribu�on between "who owns the economy" and "who pays for it" (Christophers, 2020;Dorling, 2014). This cri�cism is not new and has been discussed globally (Aalbers, 2017;Wetzstein, 2017), promp�ng approaches challenging mainstream models and assump�ons on housing markets and interven�ons (Wetzstein, 2022), embraced by the degrowth and post-growth literature on housing decommodifica�on (Savini, 2023).…”