The Role of Emerging Communities in Sustainability Transformations: An Anti-Essentialist Spatiality of Degrowth Cities

In this interdisciplinary master’s thesis, I am answering the question: What should be the role of communities in sustainability transformations, and what do considerations of communities in cities reveal in the context of debates about the sustainability and economic growth? To answer this question, my approach, informed by critical theory, encompasses both a theoretical reflection on the causes and scope of the environmental and social crises and a translation of those reflections into proposals for action. I elaborate the normative positions of ecomodernism and degrowth and their places in the theoretical frameworks. I work under the assumption that both approaches subscribe to some version of sufficientarianism. By spatialising green growth, I demonstrate that the transformation pathway proposed by ecomodernism cannot realize their normative ideal because actual green growth in the Global North severely harms human development in the Global South. I develop a theoretical rebuttal of ecomodernist critiques of degrowth by deconstructing the notion of the economy and offering a non-localist conception of communities. Enacting counter hegemonic economic, communal praxes can theoretically address ecomodernists’ critique of degrowth. I corroborate my theoretical arguments by spatialising them in city contexts. Degrowth might be feasible through diverse economic praxes that go beyond localism.