Post-growth municipalism: exploring the scalar constitution, strategic relevance, and legal viability of the municipal scale for tackling growth dependencies

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper examines the role of the “municipal scale” for the institutionalisation of post-growth-oriented arrangements. It develops an approach that foregrounds the everyday making and unmaking of growth dependencies, which it puts into conversation with the relational spatial thinking and trans-institutional orientation of new municipalist scholarship. Weaving together insights from both literatures, the paper outlines what it means to focus transformations beyond growth at the municipal scale, the strategic rationale of and behind this focus, and the legal consequences thereof. In doing so, the paper identifies the municipal scale as a salient entry point to address conceptual and empirical tensions between state- and community-led transformations – a challenge that impinges on post-growth research specifically. Following an analysis of the scalar constitution, strategic relevance, and legal viability of the municipal scale, the paper argues for a more space and scale-sensitive approach to post-growth transformations and policy.