Degrowth in the Suburbs: A Radical Urban Imaginary

by Samuel Alexander, Brendan Gleeson

This book addresses a central dilemma of the urban how to make the vast suburban landscapes that ring the globe safe and sustainable in the face of planetary ecological crisis.  The authors argue that degrowth, a planned contraction of economic overshoot, is the only feasible principle for suburban renewal. They depart from the anti-suburban sentiment of much environmentalism to show that existing suburbia can be the centre-ground of transition to a new social dispensation based on the principle of self-limitation. The book offers a radical new urban imaginary, that of degrowth suburbia, which can arise Phoenix like from the increasingly stressed cities of the affluent Global North and guide urbanisation in a world at risk. This means dispensing with much contemporary green thinking, including blind faith in electric vehicles and high-density urbanism, and accepting the inevitability and the benefits of planned energy descent. A radical but necessary vision for the times.

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Politics, Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change, Urban Studies

230 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 21, 2018

About the author

Dr. Samuel Alexander, co-director of the Simplicity Institute, is a lecturer at the Office for Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne, Australia, teaching a course called ‘Consumerism and the Growth Economy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives’ into the Masters of Environment. He is also a Research Fellow with the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute. He is author of Prosperous Descent: Crisis as Opportunity in an Age of Limits (2015) and Entropia: Life Beyond Industrial Civilisation (2013), and editor of Voluntary Simplicity: The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture (2009) and co-editor of Simple Living in History: Pioneers of the Deep Future (2014).

As well as his academic work, in recent years Sam has been working on a ‘simpler way’ demonstration project called Wurruk’an. He is also founder of the Simplicity Collective, a website and social network dedicated to exploring the relationships between voluntary simplicity, energy descent, and post-growth / degrowth economics. Dr. Alexander’s PhD thesis, conducted through Melbourne Law School, is entitled “Property beyond Growth: Toward a Politics of Voluntary Simplicity”.

Reviews

[Rebecca Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent book that has changed my thinking on some issues and has strengthened my stances on others. The authors of the book compellingly make the argument that degrowth is a necessity due to both climate breakdown and dwindling supplies of cheap fossil fuels. This degrowth, or energy descent, can be planned (for a prosperous descent) or unplanned (and thus chaotic). For several reasons, the authors argue that urban and suburban social movements in wealthy countries should focus on radical transformation, especially of suburban neighbourhoods with a focus on urban agriculture, a sharp reduction in energy use, re-commoning of public land, and frugal abundance.

Some arguments the authors made very well:
1. We must stop using fossil fuels but renewables cannot allow us the same level of energy use. Therefore, we must dramatically reduce our energy use.
2. Techno-optimism is not based on reality. For example, the idea that we can rebuild high-tech "green" cities and that everyone can own an electric car is not based on the actually existing Earth in which there are finite resources and energy sources.
3. People in wealthy countries should dramatically reduce consumption so that people in poor countries can achieve a level of comfort within ecological limits.
4. Grassroots action and transformation is what will spark structural changes and includes radical transformations of our ways of life. We cannot wait for governments to act.
5. We need to inspire people with new stories about how a life based on solidarity, sharing, and collective sufficiency can, in fact, be better than a life based on consumer capitalism
6. We need a decentralized eco-socialist world based on participatory democracy to get us through this crisis without chaos.

The authors do discuss social justice struggles but I think they could have considered the work of Marxist feminists such as Silvia Federici, who discuss the liberatory potential of re-commoning the realm of social reproduction. I also feel an engagement with Indigenous resurgence movements and a consideration of how degrowth can fit in with decolonization would have been important.

This is an excellent companion book to David Holmgren's new book 'RetroSuburbia'. Taken together they are potentially life-transforming. I found this book quite inspiring. I'm ready to get to work radically transforming my life, my neighbourhood, and the world!

[Sarah Guldenbrein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was nice, but it was sort of just Juliet Schor's Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth with a sprinkling of degrowth-specific vocabulary and citations.