Paper short abstract:

The paper considers the knowledge requirements of planning that supports diverse economies as a way of reducing the dependence on growth.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of the paper is to explore the knowledge requirements of planning that challenges pro-growth dynamics through prefiguring diverse economies. It is based on the interface of de-growth and post-growth perspectives with the diverse economies framework of Gibson-Graham. It begins from an analysis of how pro-growth dynamics underpin much contemporary planning and then considers the potential alternatives emerging from the de-growth and post-growth planning literature. It uses the diverse economies framework to understand such alternatives as thickening aspects of current economic activity, rather than positing an alternative ideal economy. The proposition is that practical examples of such alternatives, even if individually modest, are able to prefigure a significant challenge to the pro-growth hegemony. A number of cases into diverse economies are explored including practices of commoning. Lessons are drawn for how planning can enable the shift to more diverse economies, opening up a discussion about the knowledges required and the methodologies involved. The paper draws on extensive review of the research literature alongside European case studies of: neo-endogenous development, cooperatives, community land trusts, social enterprises managing community assets, community-owned infrastructure and urban commoning. It concludes that post-growth dynamics in planning will require new ways of understanding local communities, as well as greater emphasis on landownership and social capital. Attention will have to be paid to the details of management and business models within diverse economies and how knowledge of these can be disseminated.

Paper short abstract:

Post-growth thinking can help reshape knowledge infrastructures (KIs). eBird, a citizen science project, embodies dynamics typical of contemporary KIs, including their material and social relations. Yet eBird also contains other tendencies that are fruitful starting points to foster other values.

Paper long abstract:

Post-growth thinking can help reshape knowledge infrastructures (KIs), as demonstrated in this analysis of eBird, the largest ‘citizen science’ project in the world. The starting point is what we learn if we look at knowledge infrastructures through their material dimension. This is especially important because while KIs share many features with infrastructures tout court, the informational turn in science (Beaulieu 2004; Wouters et al. 2013) and datafication (Beaulieu and Leonelli 2021) have inscribed KI firmly in the imaginary of the virtual, in opposition to the material. This erasure partly explains why we are so shocked by the realisations of the impact of consumption and pollution that the digital produces (Miedema and et al 2023).

Using eBird as a case, the presentations sets out how knowledge infrastructures have a material impact that varies from non-negligible to very substantial, depending on their design and on how we draw their boundaries. While current KIs, like eBird, extend the framing of nature in terms of resource availability for extraction or conservation (Turnhout et al 2014), the presentation explores how aspects already present in eBird can be expanded and consolidated to enable a focus on meaning in relation to measurements of objects, on topologies rather than location, on networks rather than individual participants (Turnhout et al 2015) and on possibility and potential, rather than calculation and probability. The need to reconfiguring KIs to suit different relations between past and future in the face of increasing uncertainty and systemic shifts is also noted.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents an engagement with post-growth paradigms from an design perspective. It includes various prototypes to catalyse discussion on how assuming a different kind of end-user might contribute to shifting design from a motor of consumption to a contributor to post-growth futures.

Paper long abstract:

Designers play an important role in driving affluent capitalist economies. Despite sufficiently high living standards and the clear need to reduce consumption in industrialized nations, they are constantly developing new products that are supposed to make life easier and more pleasant. Industry benefits from the devaluation of human skills and cumulative technological dependence resulting from shifting expectations (Shove 2003) and automation (Pirgmaier 2020). However, it is becoming increasingly clear that neither the planet nor humans benefit from this paradigm.

In this paper, we argue how deeply embedded, often implicit ideas about end-users - identified as a techno-hedonist persona in Dahlgren et al. (2021) - lie at the basis of current design practices leading to a continuation of harmful consumerism.

To break this pattern, we introduced a different persona, grounded in a post-growth paradigm, to designers. Drawing on post-growth ideas around ecological limits, commons-based ownership, and voluntary simplicity (Sharmal et al. 2023) we envisioned a persona who, contrary to dominant assumptions, is willing and able to make an effort, learn new skills, and adapt their expectations of comfort and convenience. This persona, tentatively called an Eco-Harmonist, evoked a different way of designing and different kinds of outcomes that have potential to transform design practices and shape post-growth living from the bottom up.

To stimulate interaction with the audience, we'll bring examples from these projects to our talk, such as the BRYS thermostat interface, developed in collaboration with industry, and the Living Shirt and Municipan, designed as part of dedicated student projects.

Paper short abstract:

Based on Participatory Action Research with Foodpark Amsterdam, this presentation develops ‘greyness’ as a form of ‘being in-between’ that has a poetic and revolutionary potential for re-patterning present structures of capitalist market dynamics, making space for community-led urban agriculture.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation aims to develop ‘greyness’ as a form of ‘being in-between’ that has a revolutionary potential for re-patterning present structures of capitalist market dynamics, making space for community-led urban agriculture. With ‘greyness’ as a lens, I examine how activist- and artist-led urban farming initiatives are able to unsettle business as usual, by identifying and using situations of informality and in-betweenness, sometimes also referred to as ‘the cracks’ within the current system (Forter 2022, Fremeaux & Jordan 2021, Nersessian 2015).

This research is based on Participatory Action Research with Voedselpark Amsterdam, an initiative that aims to strategically change the narrative around the development of the Lutkemeerpolder and compare this with the strategies of other successful urban faming initiatives in Amsterdam Nieuw West. This provides the empirical foundation for two areas where ‘greyness’ can be harnessed as revolutionary potential: First, legal grey areas on land use are identified and strategically used. Second, so-called ‘grey literature’ (that is publications that are neither academic nor commercial) are disseminated that reveal unjust procedure or provide alternative plans for the area. The way ‘greyness’ is operationalized for political ends, I want to argue, may be understood as a poetic process, a technique by which meanings become unfixed, the status quo becomes defamiliarized and new politics are able to emerge. With this, I aim to contribute to the scholarly field of transformative change by providing thick ethnographic description of change processes and showing the relevance of artistic methods and theory to engender and understand change processes.