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'Degrowth', a type of 'postgrowth', is becoming a strong political, practical and cultural movement for downscaling and transforming societies beyond capitalist growth and non-capitalist productivism to achieve global sustainability and satisfy everyone's basic needs.
This groundbreaking collection on housing for degrowth addresses key challenges of unaffordable, unsustainable and anti-social housing today, including going beyond struggles for a 'right to the city' to a 'right to metabolism', advocating refurbishment versus demolition, and revealing controversies within the degrowth movement on urbanisation, decentralisation and open localism. International case studies show how housing for degrowth is based on sufficiency and conviviality, living a 'one planet lifestyle' with a common ecological footprint.
This book explores environmental, cultural and economic housing and planning issues from interdisciplinary perspectives such as urbanism, ecological economics, environmental justice, housing studies and policy, planning studies and policy, sustainability studies, political ecology, social change and degrowth. It will appeal to students and scholars across a wide range of disciplines.
List of contents
Foreword
Joan Martinez-Alier Part 1 Simple Living for All1. Housing for growth narratives
Anitra Nelson2. Housing for degrowth narratives
François SchneiderPart 2 Housing Justice
3. From the 'Right to the City' to the 'Right to Metabolism'
Elisabeth Skarðhamar Olsen, Marco Orefice and Giovanni Pietrangeli4. How can squatting contribute to degrowth?
Claudio CattaneoPart 3 Housing Sufficiency
5. Rethinking home as a node for transition
Pernilla Hagbert6. Framing degrowth: The radical potential of tiny house mobility
April Anson7. Housing and climate change resilience: Vanuatu
Wendy Christie and John SalongPart 4 Reducing Demand
8. Christiania: A Poster Child for Degrowth?
Natasha Verco9. Refurbishment vs demolition? Social housing campaigning for degrowth
Mara Ferreri10. The Simpler Way: Housing, living and settlements
Ted TrainerPart 5 Ecological Housing and Planning
11. Degrowth: A Perspective from Bengaluru, South India
Chitra Vishwanath12. Low impact living: More than a house
Jasmine Dale, Robin Marwege and Anja Humburg13. Neighbourhoods as the basic module of the global commons
Hans Widmer ('P.M.') with Francois Schneider14. The quality of small dwellings in a neighbourhood context
Harpa Stefansdottir and Jin XuePart 6 Whither Urbanisation?
15. Housing for degrowth: Space, planning and distribution
Jin Xue16. Urbanisation as the death of politics: Sketches of degrowth municipalism
Aaron Vansintjan17. Scale, place and degrowth: Getting from here to 'there' - On Xue and Vansintjan I
Andreas Exner18. Geography matters: Ideas for a degrowth spatial planning paradigm - On Xue and Vansintjan II
Karl Krähmer19. 'Open localism' - On Xue and Vansintjan III
François Schneider and Anitra NelsonPart 7 Anti-Capitalist Values and Relations20. Mietshäuser Syndikat: Collective ownership, the 'housing question' and degrowth
Lina Hurlin21. Non-monetary eco-collaborative living for degrowth
Anitra Nelson22. Summary and research futures for housing for degrowth
Anitra Nelson and François Schneider
About the author
Anitra Nelson is an activist-scholar, Associate Professor in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, Melbourne (Australia), and author and editor of several books including Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (2018) and Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (ed.) (2011).
François Schneider has supported degrowth since 2001. Co-founder of Research & Degrowth (http://degrowth.org/) and initiator of degrowth conferences, he is associate researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona. In 2012, he started the experiential project Can Decreix, 'house of degrowth' in Catalan.
Summary
This collection of diverse responses engages with various challenges posed by housing for degrowth, across both the Global North and South, including housing justice and sufficiency, development and sustainability.
