Post-Growth Planning: Cities Beyond the Market Economy

This book draws on a wide range of conceptual and empirical materials to identify and examine planning and policy approaches that move beyond the imperative of perpetual economic growth. It sketches out a path towards planning theories and practices that can break the cyclical process of urban expansion, crises, and recovery that negatively affect ecosystems and human lives.

To reduce the dramatic social and environmental impact of urbanization, this book offers both a critique of growth-led urban development and a prefiguration of ecologically regenerative and socially just ways of organizing cities and regions. It uncovers emerging possibilities for post-growth planning in the fields of collective housing, mobility, urban commoning, ecological land-use, urban-rural symbiosis, and alternative planning worldviews. It provides a toolkit of concepts and real-life examples for urban scholars, urbanists, activists, architects, and designers seeking to make cities prosper within planetary boundaries.

This book speaks to both experts and beginners in post-growth thinking. It concludes with a manifesto and glossary of key terms for urban scholars, students, and practitioners.

Federico Savini is senior lecturer in environmental planning, institutions and politics at the Center for Urban Studies of the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

António Ferreira is principal researcher in planning at CITTA: Centre for Research on Territory, Transports and Environment, University of Porto, Portugal.

Kim Carlotta von Schönfeld is researcher on the Mobile Risk Society at the Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Umwelt Nürtingen-Geislingen, Germany and collaborating researcher at CEGOT: Centre of Studies in Geography and Spatial Planning, University of Porto, Portugal.