Learning from an Ordinary Suburban Post-Growth Struggle: Not by Design, Nor by Disaster

Suburbs worldwide are described as unsustainable given the high levels of resource consumption, waste disposal, and their vulnerability to climate change. While mainstream academic and policy discourses have long focused on densification ‐ hence growth ‐ as a solution to address the suburban sustainability crisis, an emerging body of scholarship suggests that the spatial and socio-technical structure of suburbs may off er opportunities for a postgrowth scenario. However, much of this literature remains either theoretical or rooted in narrow, anecdotal examples of single policy interventions, which replicate some of the shortcomings seen in broader postgrowth and degrowth studies. By exploring an ‘ordinary’ postgrowth transition in a medium-sized city in Southern Europe, I argue that such a shift will not unfold as suggested by existing literature: neither as a purely top-down or bott om-up process, nor as a totalizing victory or defeat, or a binary outcome of ‘by Design or Disaster’. Instead, a suburban postgrowth transition emerges as a multi-actor, multi-scalar, and multi-dimensional process of multiple niches, where although there is a broad consensus on the need to transition away from a growth-dependant water and sanitation system, a struggle for a more radical postgrowth future is taking place.