Seminar: "Transitioning to post-growth cities", by Angelos Varvarousis

The REAL-Postgrowth project (Post-growth – REAL – A Post-Growth Deal) is excited to announce that Angelos Varvarousis, a post-doctoral researcher presents a talk as part of our monthly public seminar series.

 

Seminar: "Transitioning to post-growth cities"

Speaker:  Angelos Varvarousis, ICTA-UAB researcher at REAL- postgrowth

Facilitated by David Gilbert, ICTA-UAB researcher

 

• Date: Tuesday, April 1st 2025
• Time: 15.00-16.00 (CET)
• Venue. Online  - Join: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88332475306?pwd=Q0t6Ok8GNWoq9Fyf3AXNd7VqFskslC.1

 

Cities around the world are dependent on growth, but such growth has become, to use Herman Daly's term, uneconomic - the costs of growth, within and beyond the cities' boundaries, far exceed the benefits. Post-growth cities are cities that thrive without growth, serving equitably the needs of their population without exceeding their fair share of planetary boundaries. What would an urban post-growth vision look like and what policies would it entail? Here, we present seven policy-oriented guidelines for cities that wish to commit to a post-growth transition. We argue that cities should limit the financialisation of their assets, socialise basic infrastructures and spaces, redistribute income and guarantee access to services, decoupling in this way human well-being from growth and breaking the dependence of cities and city administrations upon growth.

Angelos Varvarousis is a senior - Ramon y Cajal - researcher at ICTA/UAB and the director of the International Masters on Degrowth: Ecology, Economics, Policy. He has excessively studied socio-spatial transformations through an interdisciplinary scientific toolkit inspired by urban studies, commons' management, island studies, and social and solidarity economics. He has published the monograph "Liminal Commons" at Bloomsbury Academic Publishing in the top book series in the field. He is a visiting professor at the National Technical University of Athens, the Tilburg University, the Hellenic Open University, and the University of the Aegean. Together with Professor Arun Agrawal, co-direct an international laboratory that pushes the frontiers of research on commons and commoning by bridging different schools of thought. He has worked with major international institutions such as the European Commission, the British Council, the Onassis Cultural Foundation and the Oslo Architecture Triennale.