Presentation short abstract

This paper examines depaving as a degrowth practice in the climate crisis. Focusing on the depaving movement in the U.S., the incremental subtraction of impervious surfaces is a minor demolition with major ecological benefits, operating at both local & infrastructural scales of urban transformation.

Presentation long abstract

This paper examines depaving as a degrowth practice in the climate crisis. Depaving, a minor demolition with major ecological benefits, operates at both local & infrastructural scales of urban transformation; it resists normative notions of degrowth as spectacular, instantaneous acts of demolition, or as a decline or stagnation in urban transformation.

Under a growth model, U.S. cities have experienced increasing heatwaves, storm surges, and floods not only due to climate change, but also due to material design decisions to pave over the earth for cars and construction. Impervious surfaces compound the effects of climate by design, and depaving regards a built environment in need of an ecological repair of the ground. If degrowth in construction (a historically growth-oriented industry) entails urgently addressing architecture’s “carbon form,” it becomes crucial for designers not only to contend with the verticality of the built environment, but also its vast horizontality; its petrocultural urban crust.

Focusing on the depaving movement in the U.S., I examine how the incremental subtraction of impervious surfaces such as concrete and asphalt (and the parallel act of planting and remediating soil) has played out in community and regulatory contexts in the U.S. Northeast, including its impetus, its site-specific and material actions, its organizational structure and timeline, and its barriers to implementation. Drawing from an architectural and urban design perspective, this paper reflects on the potentials and paradoxes of subtraction as a design act, and speculates on how designers may adapt their services toward urban degrowth practices and resist economic growth.