Strategic planning for degrowth: What, who, how

Abstract

Degrowth is gaining traction as a viable alternative to mainstream approaches to sustainability. However, translating degrowth insights into concrete strategies of collective action remains a challenge. To address this challenge, this paper develops a degrowth perspective for strategic spatial planning as well as a strategic approach for degrowth. I argue that a degrowth transition needs to address three strategic issues: depth, agency, and trajectory. Degrowth strategies aim for satiation, the satisfaction of all essential needs in a particular society. To do so, they rely on diffused societal power, raising from existing practices of reduction. Strategies also follow a nonlinear trajectory that seeks to prefigure satiation, popularize it among the masses, and then pressure existing institutions. Strategic spatial planning offers important insights for dealing with these challenges but needs to embrace satiation as a strategic goal. It can do so by creating complementarities between prefigurative practices that perform satiation. The article defines and illustrates these processes by looking at the making of Amsterdam’s ‘doughnut’ strategy.