On the road to urban degrowth economics? Learning from the experience of C40 cities, doughnut cities, Transition Towns, and shrinking cities

Abstract

Cities have special importance and the potential to serve as places for social, economic, and ecological transition experiments. They create organisations and networks to collectively address various sustainability challenges. One of the broad transformational ideas that can guide a far-reaching transition and address the key sustainability challenges is degrowth. We postulate that a new narrative of ‘urban degrowth economics’ is necessary to operationalise degrowth on a larger scale. Analysing the strategies and policies of cities that represent selected networks or phenomena through the lens of such a narrative can demonstrate which of the current approaches to urban development are the closest to degrowth values. By juxtaposing degrowth proposals with the main themes analysed in urban economics, we propose criteria for urban degrowth economics. We then apply these criteria to assess selected case study cities that represent the following networks and phenomena: C40 (Copenhagen), Transition Towns (Totnes), doughnut economics (Amsterdam), and shrinking cities (Detroit).