Degrowth,legitimacy,and the foundational economy: A response to Rydin

The degrowth proposition is commonly deemed ‘contentious’, ‘difficult’, potentially not pragmatic, or even too slow to address the ongoing socio-ecological crisis. In a society that sees growth as a universal value or natural process, the prospect of a planning approach funded on satiation will raise concerns. Furthermore, propositions involving limitation, reduction or phasing out – even when framed as liberating people from socio-ecological injustices – can lead to worries about a pseudo-state-led form of planning, invasive of personal and collective freedom.

Given these concerns, it is important to further explain and clarify the meaning and possible implications of degrowth for and in planning. I greatly welcome Rydin’s invitation to develop what in my paper I described as ‘a degrowth turn in strategic planning’.

I am thankful for both her kind appreciation of my current and past work and her critiques. I identify four main issues in her comment: a) the choice between pragmatism and institutional thinking in times of urgency; b) the definition of essential needs and the role of planning therein; c) the place of profit and the foundational economy in a postgrowth society; and d) the profile of a postgrowth planner. I will try to clarify all of these points.

Like degrowth scholars, Rydin recognises the ‘planetary overshoot’ of the global economy as well as the creeping ecological crisis that is undermining humans’ very conditions of existence on this planet. Yet she argues that planning needs a pragmatic approach to these risks. As she argues, ‘the current crises cannot wait for a society-wide shift in values’. Later, she suggests that this pragmatic approach would mean a focus on ‘efficiency of existing infrastructural systems’ as well as promoting the so-called ‘foundational economy’.

The proposition of degrowth stems from the evidence that four decades of pragmatic, efficiency-oriented approaches to sustainability have failed to deliver on meeting either climate or social targets. Degrowth economics shows that increasing production and consumption cannot be decoupled from environmental degradation, measured as CO₂ emissions, nitrogen, land use, deforestation, and many other indicators (Haberl et al., 2020). Given that they are ultimately transformations of nature and labour input, any form of consumption and production involves ecological change and the dissipation of energy and resources. Degrowth recognises the importance of an efficient and technologically advanced economy, but also sheds light on the limits of these approaches: rebound effects, the shifting of ecological and social costs, induced needs and so forth (Wiedmann et al., 2020). In a growing economy, improvements in efficiency are offset by increased production/consumption, with the result that global emissions are not decreasing. Indeed, current attempts to reduce CO₂ emissions are not even coming close to stopping a trend that is becoming what the Secretary-General of the United Nations has called ‘a highway to climate hell’ (Guterres, 2022).

If we accept the scientific evidence that decoupling is not occurring at the speed and scale required to meet critical climate and ecological targets, then we need to talk about lowering the amount of production and consumption. The degrowth proposition clearly sees this as a major socio-political challenge, rather than a technological one. Reduction is understood as a pathway to equality because it primarily targets unnecessary sectors as a way of creating space and freeing up resources for increasing the provision of essential services. Obviously, this proposition requires a definition of essential needs, which must be met to address poverty, as well as a definition of those unnecessary activities that can be downscaled.

My paper started from the evidence that the very prospect of reduction, even when framed as an opportunity, remains taboo in planning theory and practice. The reason is that the viability of the most important instruments that planners use (such as capturing added value or taxation) depends on increasing production and consumption, which is accounted for as land valorisation. In many countries, modern planning is founded upon the link between socio-ecological measures and increasing land values. For this reason, moreover, mainstream approaches to sustainability often struggle to deliver on social justice targets. The success of green/smart/circular urban economies is built on cheap labour and the cheapness of the planetary mines where lithium, cobalt, e-waste, and so forth are extracted (Arboleda, 2020). The green, the electric, the smart, and the renewable are still exclusive goods when dependent on profit-generating economies.

In my view, pure pragmatism can be counterproductive under these conditions. If pragmatism means to do what is generally agreed upon (by current powers and ideologies) then it might simply amount to business as usual. If pragmatism means doing what is required to reach desired outcomes – not hitting tipping points, stopping resource extraction, etc. – then planning still needs to face the problem of legitimacy.

Legitimacy is the core business of institutional thought, which is deeply concerned with social values. A pragmatic approach to reduction that lacks public legitimacy could readily mutate into eco-authoritarianism, especially when fueled by a sense of crisis. For example, this happened in France when a simple tax on fuel led to severe protests and in The Netherlands, where proposals to reduce nitrogen emissions to protect nature and soils inspired dissent among farmers. If short-term rentals are limited without the policy being seen as legitimate, the measure will generate a backlash from homeowners. The challenges for degrowth, in other words, are not only to identify the economic sectors and land uses that are to be phased out, but also to create the necessary legitimacy to do so in a democratic manner.

My paper tackles these challenges. I wrote it beginning with the evidence that degrowth is gaining momentum, but lacks a theory to achieve popular and institutional backup. Moreover, degrowth economics does not deal sufficiently with legitimacy and institutions. My argument is that degrowth economics lacks strategic thought, and often reverts to strange, state-led managerial approaches. It is necessary to question values and how they are embedded in institutions. To do so, we can learn from the radical tradition of strategic planning.

Rydin recognises that satisfying ‘essential needs’ (for all) is important. She celebrates what is known as the ‘foundational’ economy, which satisfies citizens’ essential needs, such as (health)care, healthy food, and shelter. We both call for a planning approach that places need front and centre. Yet degrowth recognises that under conditions of ecological overshoot and massive land consumption, promoting a new economy will not work without phasing out the old one. The reason for this is both economic and ecological. Profit-seeking growth agendas tend to marginalise the foundational economy. In other words, land that is used for mining cannot be used for growing food. Plots that are used for a highway cannot host housing or recreational areas. The tension between growth and the foundational economy is also visible in the way that monocentric regional growth strategies affect spaces in the hinterland that are ‘left behind’, leading to urban shrinkage (Rydin, 2023).

Most of the tools that planners use every day are founded upon the ‘accepted’ understanding of what is essential and non-essential, good and bad, minimal and luxurious. These categories are applied to a multitude of planning instruments, whether these be building requirements; the number of parking lots; the minimum level of public transportation access; speed limits; the type and number of (non)commercial licenses; nature protection requirements; environmental zones; property taxes; vacancy taxes; limits on cruise ships; noise, smell, and safety requirements for enterprises; minimum health care services per neighbourhood; or aesthetic prescriptions. These tools are all riven with values. The problem, however, is that today these instruments are not employed to fulfil reduction targets but are rather used to ‘manage’ city regions’ ambitions for economic growth. To reuse Rydin’s metaphor, we already live in an Orwellian world in which needs are defined in advance by powerful, growth-seeking interests.

My proposal is to take satiation as a guiding principle to (re)develop the instrumentation of planning. Yet to start this transition requires, planning needs to build the necessary political pressure. Degrowth sees reduction as a strategy to create physical and discursive space for the provision of essential services and the foundational economy that Rydin celebrates. Ultimately, we need to start from what is already there, from the prefigurative practices that already cater for the multitude of poor people who cannot even afford to worry about who takes the planning decisions that affect their lives. For degrowth planning, foregrounding essential needs would mean paying attention to those whose essential needs go unsatisfied.

Beyond a bare minimum of need, the essential is defined in ways that are historically contingent, geographically specific, and politically constructed. This process of definition is clearly political. Planners therefore need to engage with grassroots organisations, NGOs, not-for-profit groups, voluntary organisations, civic society, cooperatives, activist administrators, unions and socio-ecological movements that advocate for socio-ecological justice and, in so doing, perform satiation against the never ending pressure to expand consumption and production. In other words, planners’ definition of essential needs must be informed by the experience of those whose needs are not satisfied and by those who deliberately try to fulfil them.

The foundational economy is part of this political landscape. My approach is fully in line with the diverse economies approach developed by Gibson-Graham and cited by Rydin. Gibson-Graham recognises the transformative value of those economies that exist in the cracks of the capitalist economy and present an alternative to waged labour, exploitative enterprises, private property, market exchange and interest-based financing (Gibson-Graham, 2006).

There are myriad of existing practices that prefigure degrowth in everyday politics. Yet planners must cultivate their potential to give rise to a degrowth agenda. I therefore argued that degrowth-minded planners must promote complementarities and mutual support among prefigurative practices. This would be the necessary condition that would enable the emergence of a pressure movement for a new spatial planning agenda able to gain popular support. The creation of spaces and locations for prefigurative practices to thrive is also important. Moreover, it would be strategic to build on the regional scale, working towards a new, degrowth regionalism. It is at the regional level that the tensions between excess and need, luxury and poverty, unecological and ecological, and included and excluded, can be best grasped by the masses. Because of decades in which poverty has been displaced from the smart, green, wealthy, and globally competitive urban centres, socio-ecological planning needs to adopt a larger, regional perspective.

To this end, Rydin’s urges us not to dismiss the profit motive of social enterprises. Profit is not a priority for the foundational economy because in a capitalist economy profit-seeking businesses necessarily devalue (human) work and nature. However, profit can certainly be a tool to maintain a degrowth economy if it is coupled with the notion of satiation. So, yes, we can have farmers selling their produce in a degrowth economy and drawing a profit from this to sustain themselves and their co-workers. What we cannot have is a big agribusiness whose key concern is to compete with other agro-industrial groups and maximise shareholder value, which will destroy soil health.

I agree with Rydin that this proposal is ‘radical’ because it addresses the central position of profit, accumulation and growth in the current planning system and its institutions. This approach is also ‘oppositional’ because it counteracts the way in which things are currently done. For this approach, economic growth is a means (or a possible outcome) of fulfilling essential needs, rather than producing new needs. It is the opposite of trickle-down economics. In my view, advocating a post-growth societal transition means opposing the growth imperative as such. As I explained elsewhere, degrowth is an agenda for realising a postgrowth economy (Savini, 2023).

As Rydin points out, being radical and oppositional can be uncomfortable for planners. Yet there are also plenty of planners who already feel uncomfortable with the fact that their daily work and usual tools are unable to meet climate or social targets. To those planners, I would add the many advocates of socio-ecological justice that struggle every day against rent- and profit-seeking landlords or ecocidal corporations. A degrowth planner is not only sensitive to those frustrations, but builds on that affect to catalyse pressure movements.

Degrowth planners need to start by understanding, appreciating and facilitating possible synergies between different movements and practices that continually perform satiation, providing essential services for those in need. They must adopt a regional approach to this task, creating new visions of socio-spatial change that connect different localities. This requires moving a step closer to grassroots movements and learning from insurgent and advocacy planners, as well as taking a step away from the daily administration of land uses. Degrowth needs more strategic planning.