Housing for Degrowth Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities

‘Degrowth’, a type of ‘postgrowth’, is becoming a strong political, practical and cultural movement for downscaling and transforming societies beyond capitalist growth and non-capitalist productivism to achieve global sustainability and satisfy everyone’s basic needs. This groundbreaking collection on housing for degrowth addresses key challenges of unaffordable, unsustainable and anti-social housing today, including going beyond struggles for a 'right to the city' to a 'right to metabolism', advocating refurbishment versus demolition, and revealing controversies within the degrowth movement on urbanisation, decentralisation and open localism. International case studies show how housing for degrowth is based on sufficiency and conviviality, living a ‘one planet lifestyle’ with a common ecological footprint. This book explores environmental, cultural and economic housing and planning issues from interdisciplinary perspectives such as urbanism, ecological economics, environmental justice, housing studies and policy, planning studies and policy, sustainability studies, political ecology, social change and degrowth. It will appeal to students and scholars across a wide range of disciplines.

Foreword Joan Martinez-Alier Part 1 Simple Living for All 1. Housing for growth narratives Anitra Nelson 2. Housing for degrowth narratives François Schneider Part 2 Housing Justice 3. From the ‘Right to the City’ to the ‘Right to Metabolism’ Elisabeth Skarðhamar Olsen, Marco Orefice and Giovanni Pietrangeli 4. How can squatting contribute to degrowth? Claudio Cattaneo Part 3 Housing Sufficiency 5. Rethinking home as a node for transition Pernilla Hagbert 6. Framing degrowth: The radical potential of tiny house mobility April Anson 7. Housing and climate change resilience: Vanuatu Wendy Christie and John Salong Part 4Reducing Demand 8. Christiania: A Poster Child for Degrowth? Natasha Verco 9. Refurbishment vs demolition? Social housing campaigning for degrowth Mara Ferreri 10. The Simpler Way: Housing, living and settlements Ted Trainer Part 5Ecological Housing and Planning 11. Degrowth: A Perspective from Bengaluru, South India Chitra Vishwanath 12. Low impact living: More than a house Jasmine Dale, Robin Marwege and Anja Humburg 13. Neighbourhoods as the basic module of the global commons Hans Widmer (‘P.M.’) with Francois Schneider 14. The quality of small dwellings in a neighbourhood context Harpa Stefansdottir and Jin Xue Part 6Whither Urbanisation? 15. Housing for degrowth: Space, planning and distribution Jin Xue 16. Urbanisation as the death of politics: Sketches of degrowth municipalism Aaron Vansintjan 17. Scale, place and degrowth: Getting from here to ‘there’ — On Xue and Vansintjan I Andreas Exner 18. Geography matters: Ideas for a degrowth spatial planning paradigm — On Xue and Vansintjan II Karl Krähmer 19. ‘Open localism’ — On Xue and Vansintjan III François Schneider and Anitra Nelson Part 7Anti-Capitalist Values and Relations 20. Mietshäuser Syndikat: Collective ownership, the ‘housing question’ and degrowth Lina Hurlin 21. Non-monetary eco-collaborative living for degrowth Anitra Nelson 22. Summary and research futures for housing for degrowth Anitra Nelson and François Schneider

Anitra Nelson is an activist-scholar, Associate Professor in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, Melbourne (Australia), and author and editor of several books including Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (2018) and Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (ed.) (2011). François Schneider has supported degrowth since 2001. Co-founder of Research & Degrowth (http://degrowth.org/) and initiator of degrowth conferences, he is associate researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona. In 2012, he started the experiential project Can Decreix, 'house of degrowth' in Catalan.