Building a degrowth society
Doing more with less
Like the orobouros or snake eating its own tail, our growth-obsessed world is deluded into thinking environmental growth is limitless. But when we look at the environmental challenges that surround us, it forces us to rethink our idea of unlimited growth. The only question we have to ask ourselves is whether it will be by design or disaster. Myself and many others would argue the former is the preferred option.
The global problem
In the past, our planet was abundant with environmental resources and typically low in population, which meant there was plenty to go around. Today, with more people consuming more resources, we would need one and a half Earths to sustain the existing economy into the future. This ecological overshoot continues each year, and with it, the foundations of our existence and living world are undermined.
Simultaneously, we have millions of people under-consuming. Humanitarian efforts to reduce global poverty accelerate current environmental pressures. Despite these mounting challenges, the richest nations still aim to grow their economies without apparent limit.
Planned degrowth
Given the above challenges (bearing in mind developing nations will still require plenty of opportunities to grow and prosper) it’s vital more developed nations radically downsize their consumption habits.
Calls to implement radical reduction measures on human consumption are not new. Ideological movements such as “degrowth” (French: décroissance) have been promoting anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas since the Limits to Growth (1972) report by the Club of Rome. This was the first report to ever use computer simulation to show the finite supply of resources in the context of exponential economic and population growth.
Unlike economic recession, planned degrowth means a phase of sustainably planned economic contraction in wealthy countries, eventually reaching a steady-state economy that effectively functions within the biophysical resource confines of our planet.
Economists once argued that industrial could potentially “decouple” economic growth from environmental impact. However, advisors to global corporations such as McKinsey now argue planned degrowth strategies are critical if humanity is to thrive and prosper.
Towards a simpler way of life
Some people may assume that by adopting planned degrowth, we’ll have to revert back to a regressively stagnant, anti-progressive world. A kind of primitive Dark Age inflicting deprivation and hardship on people.
But this assumption is quite wrong.
First, we must recognise that consumerism is never neutral. It’s not only a profound failure of the human imagination—but also a grotesque and disabling addiction. One that destroys human nature and fails to support our universal quest for meaning. There is no rational need for us to acquire or hoard so much stuff. Certainly not when it inflicts serious harms to our personal, social and planetary wellbeing.
Degrowth would certainly help us embrace a simpler way of life and focus on what degrowth pioneer Richard Buckminster Fuller called “doing more with less”. Adopting this simper way of life implies degrowth would set free us from the economic burden of excessive consumption and return our attention to what matters in life—human connection.
A simpler life of degrowth is far more radical and effective than many of the token “green” gestures many of us adopt today (e.g. recycling, carbon capture, limiting energy consumption in our homes).
By contrast, taking actionable steps to design a degrowth society will not only deliver basic needs to people, but also help them connect and share ideas with others, ensuring quality of life is maintained for all.
How do we design a degrowth society?
Building citizen politics through digital voting
With participatory digital voting programs we can reframe our economic democracy towards citizen-led politics. This shift towards citizen-led politics will harness citizen expertise, and redirect the current political focus away from economic growth to ensure everyone’s basic needs are met. Beyond these democratic benefits, digital voting also has the potential to administer and maintain governance more economically than present systems, through the use of renewable energy systems.
Increasing family time, reducing work time
To ensure citizens have the time to engage in citizen politics, working hours in the formal economy must be reduced to 3 days per week. Despite decreases in income, workers would have the freedom to invest in projects (and people) they care about. Not only resulting in increased production, but also boosting individual health outcomes for the betterment of society.
For those people choosing to adapt to a more simplistic life in a degrowth society, conceptions of material consumption will undergo a radical shift from ownership to access. These perceptual and behavioural changes will move us away from the idea that “wealth is what you own” (asset) towards the optimal notion that “wealth is what you share” (access).
Sharing resources, reaping benefits
Urban greening projects will ensure populations have the opportunity to nurture and grow their own gardens for food, similar to how the Cubans in Havana have transformed their neighbourhoods into “edible landscapes”. The idea of urban greening has gathering momentum, with one of the world’s largest hotel chains Accor, announcing to plant vegetable gardens at many of its hotels in efforts to cut food waste by a third. Growing Underground have built a hydroponic farm in London’s derelict underground tunnels, which provides local retailers with fresh herbs and vegetables within four hours.
Adopting a regenerative design ethos
Binge purchasing of cheap designer clothes is no different from substance abuse. This kind of disruptive behaviour is simply not an option for citizens living in a degrowth society. By contrast, degrowth citizens will find ways to upcycle or exchange the clothes they already own, buy vintage, or create anew. In a degrowth society, PR and marketing sectors will atrophy and be replaced by a regenerative design aesthetic. This shift towards regenerative design simply means people will creatively re-cycle, re-purpose, re-use huge stockpiles of existing materials and clothing, and develop more sustainable ways ways of producing new items.
“Design is the new wealth”
Aligning the degrowth society to this new regenerative design ethos means that in a real sense: we’re all designers now. Citizens are not just reframed as radical recyclers and do-it-yourself citizen experts. Increased community engagement in citizen politics means creative projects provide personal fulfilment, especially for those most involved. In addition, the challenge of designing degrowth society from the dying remains of consumer capitalism will give many people with a new meaning to their lives, regardless of how engaged in the political process they become.
The emphasis on cooperation also suggests the idea of cohousing will emerge as a sustainable alternative to private housing models. Cohousing, in the traditional Scandinavian sense, refers to an intentional community of private homes clustered around shared space. Each attached or single family home has traditional amenities, including a private kitchen. Shared spaces typically feature a common house, which may include a large kitchen and dining area, laundry, and recreational spaces.
Cohousing households have independent incomes and private lives, but people collaboratively design and manage activities and shared spaces, such as meals, meetings, events and workshops. The collaborative nature of cohousing also means it’s easy to form clubs, carpool and organize social care. Latter improvements relating to social care will be vital in the coming years, due to the fact that most of us are living longer, and that our many social care systems are not fit for purpose.
It’s important to point out that calls for a degrowth society does not include calls for demolishing our current existing systems. Rather, as urban designers and architects, we must find ways to retrofit the suburbs in ways that can be adaptive to socioeconomic changes over time. This kind of urban retrofitting would likely start small, simply by making our homes more energy-efficient, more productive, and more densely inhabited.
Igniting change
Unlike some of the prohibitively expensive utopian eco-futures discussed on the internet (e.g. the Venus Project), the degrowth society is a more humble and realistic vision of achieving a sustainable future.
Planned degrowth is also not a deterministic masterplan that manipulates people into making changes for corporate benefit. Just as there are many different people in the world, there are also many different ways in which we can make transitions to degrowth. This means that unlike traditional utopias, degrowth design will be driven not only from the top-down, by experts who can provide important advice on solutions, but also from the “bottom up” and “middle out” by citizens most affected by changes.
The above ideas reveal just some of the potential changes that could shape the future reality of degrowth societies. However, it’s important to recognise the current socioeconomic conditions that challenge degrowth’s potential. For instance, most cities suffer from poor public transport networks, which makes shaking off car dependence difficult. There’s also the ongoing stress of servicing high mortgage debts, which makes transitioning to a 3-day week virtually impossible. Finally, untethering ourselves from the incessant media channels that hypnotise us with seductive consumer marketing to keep us consuming stuff demands an enormous change in willpower.
Failures of the environmental movement to enable change suggests relying solely on individual action is futile. To spark radical degrowth measures, we need to design an entirely new post-capitalist model that promotes simple collaboration over competition. These systemic changes will never transpire unless we have a culture that demands them. So the first step on the path to change is actioning a revolution in cultural perception.
No one, even myself, expects our current hallucinatory obsession with celebrity-based consumption to suddenly end. The way in which modern media promotes growth fetish has a pervasive grip on how we continue to imagine and perceive ourselves, as individuals, communities and as nations. Yet, few would deny the fact that degrowth is arguably the most coherent framework we have to help us navigate and potentially reverse the inevitable chaos of the snake eating its own tail.
Degrowth revolution or bust… it’s up to us.
