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.