Abstract
Abstract Practical projects around the world are exploring and prefiguring ecologically feasible futures. The ideas informing these initiatives are familiar from degrowth discourses. But particularly where activists hail from the professional middle-classes of wealthy cities - architects, designers and other 'creatives' in Helsinki for example - they risk being dismissed by the media as well as by academics as vacuous life-style experimenters. Looking at Finland, the sense that this activity is not truly political or transformative can be further enhanced by activists' own reluctance to enter into explicitly political debate and their preference for discussing futures in the neutral language of science. Connecting today's situation to precursors in the 1960s, however, we can see how these local projects are embedded in local political culture, including a Finnish tendency to play up scientific rationality as a tool for managing collective affairs. This contrast with many other degrowth discourses shows the significance of local histories in influencing the space available for people to work out alternatives to the status quo. Keywords: social movements; Finland; urban/DIY activism; design
Highlights
Practical projects around the world are exploring and prefiguring ecologically feasible futures
All around the world people are seeking to make change through decentralized activities that go by many names: DIY-urbanism, urban experimentation, tactical urbanism, prototyping, urban commoning, design activism and so on
More and more municipalities encourage such citizen-directed and world-improving projects, but to assume that this activity is about seeking alternatives to the politics of economic growth would be misleading
Summary
In the decades since the late 1960s, environmentalist ideas have become part of a global middle-class culture and unsurprisingly, have come to accommodate contradictory impulses and politics (Scoones et al 2015). The garden's origins lie in a small raised bed that was semi-clandestinely tended in the summer of 2009 by activists from the environmental organization Dodo, an agile and perpetually innovative environmental grouping with a strongly urban profile and membership of young and middle-aged, variously committed people. When it was formed in the 1990s, most environmental organizations in Finland were resolutely rural or non-urban in focus. What those involved do agree on, and are happy to acknowledge, are the rewards of their activism
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
