Economics of Post-Growth Planning: Cooperation and Altruism

Post-growth Planning is an intellectual agenda explicitly developed as an antithesis to the paradigm of economic growth. Cooperation and altruism are themes of economic research in antithesis to the paradigm of market-based economic relations and selfishness. Can there be fruitful dialogues between the two fi elds? Can the more established latter inform the fast-growing former? Can formal and rigorous economics assist post-growth planning scholars? This article addresses these questions. Issues around environmental sustainability, urban commons, and common good are intrinsically related to cooperation and altruism at the micro and at the macro level: i.e. individually, altruistic behaviour is different from the one of the selfish homo economicus, and in the aggregate, altruism can translate into a social norm of cooperation for the common good. By exploring these links, I discuss how theoretical findings on altruism and cooperation can be used to frame postgrowth planning agendas.