The Impacts of Spatial Planning on Degrowth

Abstract

As the current growth economy has created severe environmental pollution and unbalanced distribution of prosperity, there is an increasing amount of critical voices calling for a change. The new concept of degrowth addresses a fundamental change in political, economic and institutional levels underpinning different norms and values towards sustainability. Spatial planning institutions have a decisive role in the transition process insofar as they take decisions regarding the use of land and its attributed space. Especially in three areas spatial planning has influential potentials to stimulate the transition process towards degrowth by enhancing: (i) a sustainable use of renewable energy sources; (ii) sustainable settlement structures; and (iii) the creation of social capital by more community based facilities. The paper explores these possibilities for intervention and shows how spatial planning can have positive impacts on degrowth.

Biodiversity policy beyond economic growth

“…Compact urban planning could help limit the physical expansion of cities (Wächter, 2013;Xue, 2014), reducing the ongoing loss and fragmentation of periurban habitats. Periurban croplands-saved from urbanization-could produce food to feed city inhabitants, thus reducing the displacement of agricultural land-use change to remote biodiverse regions (Marques et al, 2019;Table S5 in SM2).…”

Welfare with or without Growth? Potential Lessons from the German Healthcare System

“…In order to provide a trenchant presentation of its points, this article can be especially seen as a response to the literature on degrowth and post-growth [2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. The article questioned the possibility of exchanging growth by these concepts without risking unforeseeable consequences, as they currently seem to lack explanations of what this would mean for basic values like individual freedom or granted property rights as well as the growth-based financing of the social state.…”

“…Consequentially, the possibility of growth as a principle for the benefit of human welfare was denied fundamentally by some of the literature: As an alternative, the concept of "sustainable degrowth" with its core attributes of scaling down production and enhancing ecological conditions in order to increase human welfare was developed [2][3][4][5]. By changed consumption patterns, replacing GDP from its dominant position in political discussions, and decoupling material and energy use from growth, a transition from "more" (i.e., quantitative) to "better" (i.e., qualitative) progress in terms of technological improvements and knowledge increase is hoped to be achieved [6].…”

A Critical Assessment and Projection of Urban Vertical Growth in Antofagasta, Chile

“…In last years, many scientists and technologists focused on urban growth, urban sprawl, entropy generation of the cities, scaling laws and others issues in relationship with the concepts of density and organization [1][2][3][4][5]. However, research conducted is not always communicated well to the entire society.…”

“…These changes in the operative parameters (used for example to define comfort standards inside and outside of buildings) are the main interest of this work. Authors from different disciplines are now studying the cities' transformation and the planning related issues (see for example the cited works [1][2][3][4][5] and other researches of Coch et al [7], Bettencourt and West [8], Wheeler [9], Robinson [10]). …”