Downloads
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24306/plnxt/98Keywords:
degrowth, gentrification, right to the city, neighbourhood, activism, urban transformation, socio-ecological transformation, land commodificationAbstract
Cities have gained increasing attention in the debate on how to tackle the global environmental crisis. However, urban strategies for sustainability have often been criticised for being insufficient in effectively mitigating environmental impacts due to externalisation and cost-shifting, and for producing social contradictions, such as ecological gentrification. Rather than considering these critiques as reasons to abandon ecological urban transformations, this article advocates for the right to the ecological city, for which the goals of ecological sustainability and social justice need to be reconciled through a degrowth strategy based on the principles of sufficiency, reuse and sharing. However, this theoretical framework encounters several challenges in urban practice. These are discussed through the author’s lens as an observant participant in the Fondazione di Comunità Porta Palazzo, a community foundation involved in the transformation of the neighbourhoods of Aurora and Porta Palazzo in Turin, Italy, through projects focused on public space and housing. The discussion of these challenges suggests that while the right to the ecological city is hard to achieve, it remains an important goal in the transformation of cities and neighbourhoods, one that must rely on structural change driven by diverse actors across multiple scales.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Karl Krähmer
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Angelo, H., & Wachsmuth, D. (2015). Urbanizing urban political ecology: A critique of methodological cityism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 39(1), 16–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12105
Angelo, H., & Wachsmuth, D. (2020). Why does everyone think cities can save the planet? Urban Studies, 57(11), 2201–2221. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098020919081
Anguelovski, I., Connolly, J. J. T., García-Lamarca, M., Cole, H., & Pearsall, H. (2018). New scholarly pathways on green gentrification: What does the urban ‘green turn’ mean and where is it going? Progress in Human Geography, 43(6), 1064–1086. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518803799
Bauman, A., Alexander, S., & Burdon, P. (2024). Land commodification: A structural barrier to degrowth transition. In K. Heron & L. Eastwwod (Eds.), De Gruyter handbook of degrowth: Propositions and prospects (pp. 251–271). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter
Bohnenberger, K. (2020). Can ‘sufficiency’ reconcile social and environmental goals? A Q-methodological analysis of German housing policy. Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, 36(1), 171–189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-020-09762-4
Bolzoni, M., & Semi, G. (2023). Adaptive urbanism in ordinary cities: Gentrification and temporalities in Turin (1993–2021). Cities, 134, 104144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.104144
Bourlessas, P., Cenere, S., & Vanolo, A. (2022). The work of foodification: An analysis of food gentrification in Turin, Italy. Urban Geography, 43(9), 1328–1349. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2021.1927547
Bragaglia, F. (2024). Another sign on the wall: Graffiti slogans between dissent and post-political dynamics. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 42(7), 1224–1241. https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544241230185
Brokow-Loga, A., & Eckardt, F. (Eds.). (2020). Postwachstumsstadt. Konturen einer solidarischen Stadtpolitik. München: Oekom.
Cabodi, C., Caruso, N., Mela, S., Pede, E., Rossignolo, C., Loi, E., Di Gangi, E., Martinengo, S., Rizaj, S., Padovano, F., Orlova, A., & Pelissero, D. (2020). Sguardi su Aurora: Tra centro e periferia. Torino: AuroraLAB, Politecnico di Torino.
Caputo, S., Donoso, V., Izaga, F., & Britto, P. (2019). The democracy of green infrastructure: Some examples from Brazil and Europe. In F. Lemes de Oliveira & I. Mell (Eds.), Planning cities with nature: Theories, strategies and methods (pp. 137–152). Cham: Springer.
Chancel, L. (2022). Global carbon inequality over 1990–2019. Nature Sustainability, 5(11), 931–938. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-00955-z
Chancel, L., & Piketty, T. (2015). Carbon and inequality: From Kyoto to Paris. Trends in the global inequality of carbon emissions (1998–2013) & prospects for an equitable adaptation fund. Paris: Paris School of Economics.
Chertkovskaya, E., Paulson, A., & Barca, S. (Eds.). (2019). Towards a political economy of degrowth. London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Choi, M., Van Zandt, S., & Matarrita-Cascante, D. (2018). Can community land trusts slow gentrification? Journal of Urban Affairs, 40(3), 394–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2017.1362318
Città di Torino. (2020). Piano di resilienza climatica. http://www.comune.torino.it/ambiente/cambiamenti_climatici/piano-di-resilienza-della-citta-di-torino.shtml
Città di Torino. (2022). Piano d’azione per l’energia sostenibile. TAPE: Turin Action Plan for Energy. Terzo Rapporto di Monitoraggio. http://www.comune.torino.it/ambiente/cambiamenti_climatici/patto_deisindaci/il-piano-dazione-2.shtml
Cooper, L., & Baer, H. A. (2019). Urban eco-communities in Australia: Real utopian responses to the ecological crisis or niche markets? Singapore: Springer.
Supino, D. (2023, July 18). I redditi di Torino, quartiere per quartiere: La città ancora lontana dai guadagni pre-Covid. I più ricchi? Non vivono in città. Corriere della Sera. https://www.corriere.it/tecnologia/23_luglio_18/redditi-torino-cap-quartiere-4d6299e3-d70d-473d-8a00-31b32db08xlk.shtml
Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. (2021). Food systems are responsible for a third of global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Nature Food, 2, 198–209. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00225-9
D’Alisa, G., Demaria, F., & Kallis, G. (Eds.). (2015). Degrowth: A vocabulary for a new era. Abingdon: Routledge.
De Angelis, M. (2022). The city as a commons: Diffused governance for social and ecological reproduction. In F. Savini, A. Ferreira, & K. C. von Schönfeld (Eds.), Post-growth planning: Cities beyond the market economy (pp. 97–111). York: Routledge.
Demaria, F., & Kothari, A. (2017). The post-development dictionary agenda: Paths to the pluriverse. Third World Quarterly, 38(12), 2588–2599. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1350821
Demaria, F., Schneider, F., Sekulova, F., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2013). What is degrowth? From an activist slogan to a social movement. Environmental Values, 22(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327113X13581561725194
Dooling, S. (2009). Ecological gentrification: A research agenda exploring justice in the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(3), 621–639. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00860.x
Fitzpatrick, N., Parrique, T., & Cosme, I. (2022). Exploring degrowth policy proposals: A systematic mapping with thematic synthesis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 365, 132764. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.132764
Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). Five misunderstandings about case-study research. Qualitative Inquiry, 12(2), 219–245. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800405284363
Genta, C., Sanyé-Mengual, E., Sala, S., & Lombardi, P. (2022). The consumption footprint as possible indicator for environmental impact evaluation at city level. The case study of Turin (Italy). Sustainable Cities and Society, 7, 103679. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2022.103679
Gore, T. (2021). Carbon inequality in 2030. Institute for European Environmental Policy, Oxfam.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. https://doi.org/10.2307/3178066
Harvey, D. (2013). Rebel cities: From the right to the city to the urban revolution. London: Verso.
Hickel, J., & Kallis, G. (2020). Is green growth possible? New Political Economy, 25(4), 469–486. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2019.1598964
Hurlin, L. (2018). Mietshäuser Syndikat: Collective ownership, the ‘housing question’ and degrowth. In A. Nelson & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 233–243). London: Routledge.
Ivanova, D., Vita, G., Steen-Olsen, K., Stadler, K., Melo, P. C., Wood, R., & Hertwich, E. G. (2017). Mapping the carbon footprint of EU regions. Environmental Research Letters, 12(5), 054013. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa6da9
Kaika, M., Varvarousis, A., Demaria, F., & March, H. (2023). Urbanizing degrowth: Five steps towards a Radical Spatial Degrowth Agenda for planning in the face of climate emergency. Urban Studies, 60(7), 1191–1211. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980231162234
Knuth, S., Stehlin, J., & Millington, N. (2020). Rethinking climate futures through urban fabrics: (De)growth, densification, and the politics of scale. Urban Geography, 41(10), 1335–1343. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2020.1850024
Kothari, A., Demaria, F., & Acosta, A. (2014). Buen Vivir, Degrowth and Ecological Swaraj: Alternatives to sustainable development and the Green Economy. Development, 57(3–4), 362–375. https://doi.org/10.1057/dev.2015.24
Krähmer, K. (2018). Geography matters: Ideas for a degrowth spatial planning paradigm—On Xue and Vansintjan II. In A. Nelson & F. Schneider (Eds.), Housing for degrowth: Principles, models, challenges and opportunities (pp. 217−222). London: Routledge.
Krähmer, K. (2020). Are green cities sustainable? A degrowth critique of sustainable urban development in Copenhagen. European Planning Studies, 29(7), 1272–1289. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2020.1841119
Krähmer, K. (2022). Degrowth and the city: Multiscalar strategies for the socio-ecological transformation of space and place. City, 26(2–3), 316–345. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2022.2035969
Krähmer, K., & Brokow-Loga, A. (2024). The case for solidary degrowth spaces. Five propositions on the challenging project of spatializing degrowth. In K. Heron & L. Eastwood (Eds.), De Gruyter handbook of degrowth: Propositions and prospects (pp. 213–232). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.
Krähmer, K., & Cristiano, S. (2022). Città oltre la crescita. Un dibattito internazionale per trasformazioni urbane sociali ed ecologiche. Roma: Castelvecchi.
Krähmer, K., & Santangelo, M. (2018). Gentrification without gentrifiers? Tourism and real estate Investment in Lisbon. Sociabilidades Urbanas – Revista de Antropologia e Sociologia, 2(6), 151–165.
Lancione, M. (2013). Truthful social science or: How we learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. Journal of Political Power, 6(1), 147–155. https://doi.org/10.1080/2158379X.2013.774976
Lees, L., Annunziata, S., & Rivas-Alonso, C. (2018). Resisting planetary gentrification: The value of survivability in the fight to stay put. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(2), 346–355. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2017.1365587
Lees, L., Shin, H. B., & López-Morales, E. (2016). Planetary gentrification. Cambridge: Polity.
Massey, D. (2005). For space. London: SAGE.
Mayer, M. (2013). First world urban activism. City, 17(1), 5–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2013.757417
Mayer, M. (2020). What does it mean to be a (radical) urban scholar-activist, or activist scholar, today? City, 24(1–2), 35–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2020.1739909
Micciarelli, G. (2022). Hacking the legal: The commons between the governance paradigm and inspirations drawn from the ‘living history’ of collective land use. In F. Savini, A. Ferreira, & K. C. von Schönfeld (Eds.), Post-growth planning: Cities beyond the market economy (pp. 112–125). York: Routledge.
Mocca, E. (2020). The local dimension in the degrowth literature: A critical discussion. Journal of Political Ideologies, 25(1), 78–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569317.2019.1696926
Monbiot, G. (2021, July 17). Private Sufficiency, Public Luxury: The final plenary of the 2021 ISEE, ESEE & Degrowth International Conference [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWRRPed4Ds0
Moran, D., Kanemoto, K., Jiborn, M., Wood, R., Többen, J., & Seto, K. C. (2018). Carbon footprints of 13 000 cities. Environmental Research Letters, 13(6), 064041. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aac72a
Mössner, S., & Miller, B. (2015). Sustainability in one place? Dilemmas of sustainability governance in the Freiburg metropolitan region. Regions Magazine, 300(1), 18–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/13673882.2015.11668692
Parrique, T., Barth, J., Briens, F., & Spangenberg, J. H. (2019). Decoupling debunked. Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability. European Environmental Bureau.
Rice, J. L., Cohen, D. A., Long, J., & Jurjevich, J. R. (2020). Contradictions of the climate-friendly city: New perspectives on eco-gentrification and housing justice. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 44(1), 145–165. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12740
Savini, F. (2021). Towards an urban degrowth: Habitability, finity and polycentric autonomism. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 53(5), 1076–1095. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X20981391
Savini, F., Ferreira, A., & Schönfeld, K. C. von (Eds.). (2022). Post-growth planning: Cities beyond the market economy. York: Routledge.
Schmid, B. (2022). What about the city? Towards an urban post-growth research agenda. Sustainability, 14(19), 11926. https://doi.org/10.3390/su141911926
Schneider, F., Kallis, G., & Martinez-Alier, J. (2010). Crisis or opportunity? Economic degrowth for social equity and ecological sustainability. Introduction to this special issue. Journal of Cleaner Production, 18(6), 511–518. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2010.01.014
Schoenberger, E. (2007). Politics and practice: Becoming a geographer. In A. Tickell, E. Sheppard, J. Peck, & T. Barnes (Eds.), Politics and practice in economic geography (pp. 27–37). Los Angeles: SAGE.
Schön, D. A. (1992). The Reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. London: Routledge.
Seim, J. (2021). Participant observation, observant participation, and hybrid ethnography. Sociological Methods & Research, 53(1), 121–152. https://doi.org/10.1177/0049124120986209
Semi, G. (2015). Gentrification. Tutte le città come Disneyland? Bologna: Il mulino.
Semi, G., & Tonetta, M. (2021). Marginal hosts: Short-term rental suppliers in Turin, Italy. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 53(7), 1630–1651. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X20912435
Sosa López, O. (2021). Bicycle policy in Mexico City: Urban experiments and differentiated citizenship. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 45(3), 477–497. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12992
Thomas, N. (2016). Reclaiming the right to the green city: Aktuelle urbane Grünraumbewegungen in Basel. In P. Oehler, N. Thomas, & M. Drilling (Eds.), Soziale Arbeit in der unternehmerischen Stadt: Kontexte, Programmatiken, Ausblicke (pp. 109–128). Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien.
Vercellone, A. (2020). Il Community Land Trust. Autonomia privata, conformazione della proprietà, distribuzione della rendita urbana. Milano: Giuffrè Francis Lefebvre.
Wachsmuth, D., Cohen, D. A., & Angelo, H. (2016). Expand the frontiers of urban sustainability. Nature, 536(7617), 391–393. https://doi.org/10.1038/536391a
Xue, J. (2021). Urban planning and degrowth: A missing dialogue. Local Environment, 27(4), 404–422. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2020.1867840
Xue, J., & Kębłowski, W. (2022). Spatialising degrowth, degrowing urban planning. Local Environment, 27(4), 397–403. https://doi.org/10.1080/13549839.2022.2066642
Zukin, S. (2009). Changing landscapes of power: Opulence and the urge for authenticity. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(2), 543–553. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2009.00867.x
