Planning for Degrowth: Insights from Shrinking Cities

Urban shrinkage and degrowth are parallel processes or projects that, despite clear differences, bear striking resemblance in refocusing attention on the limits to (economic) growth; yet they are rarely related or critically compared for policy learning. This paper attempts to do just that by exploring what insights drawn from existing empirical evidence on shrinking cities might reveal for the political project of degrowth in an increasingly uneven and exhausted capitalist world. Many cities now facing a future of low or no growth, or even chronic shrinkage, are innovating collaborative partnerships and alternative policies for more sustainable, equitable and less damaging forms of economic development in ways which contest arguments against degrowth as unviable, ineffective or iniquitous and point in directions towards a post-growth future.