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This book addresses a central dilemma of the urban age: how to make the vast suburban landscapes that ring the globe safe and sustainable in the face of planetary ecological crisis. The authors argue that degrowth, a planned contraction of economic overshoot, is the only feasible principle for suburban renewal. They depart from the anti-suburban sentiment of much environmentalism to show that existing suburbia can be the centre-ground of transition to a new social dispensation based on the principle of self-limitation. The book offers a radical new urban imaginary, that of degrowth suburbia, which can arise Phoenix like from the increasingly stressed cities of the affluent Global North and guide urbanisation in a world at risk. This means dispensing with much contemporary green thinking, including blind faith in electric vehicles and high-density urbanism, and accepting the inevitability and the benefits of planned energy descent. A radical but necessary vision for the times.
Sommario
Acknowledgement.- Foreword.- Chapter 1 Reimagining the Suburbs beyond Growth.- Chapter 2 Carbon Suburbia and the Energy Descent Future.- Chapter 3 Light Green Illusions and the 'Blind Field' of Techno-Optimism.- Chapter 4 Resettling Suburbia: A Post-Capitalist Politics 'From Below'.- Chapter 5 Unlearning Abundance: Suburban Practices of Energy Descent.- Chapter 6 Degrowth in the Suburbs: Envisioning a Prosperous Descent.- Chapter 7 Regoverning the City: Policies for a New Economy.- Chapter 8 A New Suburban Condition Dawns.- Index.
Info autore
Samuel Alexander is Research Fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and lecturer with the Office for Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne, Australia. His books include Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits (2015) and Wild Democracy: Degrowth, Permaculture, and the Simpler Way (2017).
Brendan Gleeson is Director of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne, Australia. His books include The Urban Condition (2014) and Australian Heartlands: Making Space for Hope in the Suburbs (2006).
Riassunto
This book addresses a central dilemma of the urban age: how to make the vast suburban landscapes that ring the globe safe and sustainable in the face of planetary ecological crisis. The authors argue that degrowth, a planned contraction of economic overshoot, is the only feasible principle for suburban renewal. They depart from the anti-suburban sentiment of much environmentalism to show that existing suburbia can be the centre-ground of transition to a new social dispensation based on the principle of self-limitation. The book offers a radical new urban imaginary, that of degrowth suburbia, which can arise Phoenix like from the increasingly stressed cities of the affluent Global North and guide urbanisation in a world at risk. This means dispensing with much contemporary green thinking, including blind faith in electric vehicles and high-density urbanism, and accepting the inevitability and the benefits of planned energy descent. A radical but necessary vision for the times.
