Sustainable Degrowth and Relocalizing our Economies

June 18th, 2015
Blogpost: Sustainable Degrowth and Relocalizing our Economies: An Interview with William Rees - by Jane Zhang

In your view, what are three key elements of "new economies"?

Recognizing natural limits

The overarching problem is one that the mainstream has yet to acknowledge: on a planet already in overshoot, there is no possibility of raising even the present world population to developed country material standards sustainably with known technologies and available resources. By 2008, the world population had reached 6.7 billion—it’s 7.3 billion today—while there were only about 12 billion productive hectares on Earth, or just 1.8 average hectares per capita. We can refer to “1.8 average hectares per capita” as one’s equitable “Earth share.” It represents the biocapacity available to support each person, assuming the world’s productive ecosystems were distributed equally among the entire human population. The problem is, it currently takes 4-7 global average productive hectares to provide ‘natural income’ (resources) and life-support services to the average European or North American. How many more planets do we need for sustainability? You do the math!

Societal cooperation

(Un)sustainability is a collective problem. No individual can implement the policies necessary (e.g. carbon taxes, resource quotas) to significantly reduce his/her ecological footprint or revamp the social programs needed for social stability. No country, however virtuous, can be sustainable on its own or remain insulated from global turmoil. Thus, the so-called developed world, long steeped in the rhetoric of competitive individualism, must now grapple with the notion that individual and national interests have all but converged with humanity’s common interests. Working co-operatively for the common good will require the ardent exercise of several intellectual and behavioural qualities that are unique (or nearly so) to our species, such as high intelligence, the ability to plan ahead, socio-behavioural means for cooperation, moral judgment, and empathy. The question is, are we up to the task or will we succumb to primitive combative tribalism?

Planned economic degrowth

Renegrade economist Kenneth Boulding once said, “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad or an economist.” The contemporary growth economy is a malignant social construct. We need to replace it with an ecologically benign and socially equitable no-growth variant. This idea is not new— in the mid-18th Century, Adam Smith predicted the slowing of growth as inevitable. Almost a century later, John Stuart Mill argued that society would reach a “stationery state”, but he hoped people would plan a deliberate transition to this steady state before nature imposed it upon them.

Why degrowth, and what does steady-state sustainability with justice look like?

First of all, remember that continuous growth of anything in a finite space is anomalous and ultimately self-correcting. For 99.9% of human history, local populations rarely grew for extended periods but rather fluctuated near carrying capacity as a function of food supplies, disease, etc. The recent 200 years of continuous growth that we consider the norm is actually the single most abnormal period in human history. 

Keep in mind that economic production is actually mostly a consumptive process. Manufacturing, for example, immediately irreversibly transforms large quantities of useful energy and material into an equivalent mass of useless waste (and even the smaller quantity of useful product eventually joins the waste stream). Humans are literally converting the both the non-renewable and self-producing ‘resources’ of Earth into more human bodies, toys and furniture, and the infrastructure needed to maintain civilization. The present scale of economic activity depletes essential ecosystems faster than they can regenerate. 

Remember too that beyond a certain income level (long passed in high-income countries), there is no further positive correlation between GDP per capita and objective indicators of either population health or perceived well-being. Indeed, growth can become destructive. Once basic material needs are met, it is not rich countries but rather countries with greater income equality that perform better on standard quality-of-life indicators. Greater social equity is “better for everyone.” 

With integrated fiscal, tax, employment and population policies and the like, it should be possible to create an ecologically viable, more equitable, economically stable, no-growth economy with minimal unemployment and poverty. It is important to emphasize that such a ‘steady-state’ economy need not be a stagnant economy. It can be dynamic, evolving, constantly improving. For example, as we phase out obsolete industries, new technologies and the service sector will actually expand. The idea is to maintain energy and material consumption at constant sustainable levels while creating the conditions necessary for greater personal development and improved quality of life. Society needs to get better, not bigger.

How does this relate to cities?

Urban designers and planners should begin now to rethink cities—or rather urban regions—so they function as complete quasi-independent human ecosystems. The least vulnerable and most resilient urban system might be a new form of urban-centered bioregion, or eco-city state, in which a densely built-up core is surrounded by essential supportive ecosystems. The goal is to consolidate as much as possible of the human community’s productive hinterland in close proximity to its consumptive centre. Organic “wastes” and nutrients could then be economically recycled back to farms and forests. Such a bioregionalized city would reconnect its human population to “the land.” Citizens would see themselves to be directly dependent on local ecosystems and thus have a strong incentive to manage them sustainably. Ideally, regional eco-cities would develop economic and social planning policies to maintain sustainable populations and to facilitate reducing their residents’ ecological footprints to a globally equitable 1.8 gha per capita.

What does real wealth mean to you?

Real wealth is the contentment that comes from a sense of self-worth and belonging. Real wealth derives more from intangibles than from material goods. It is rooted in community, rich personal relationships, success in the achievement of one’s potential and the opportunity to contribute to the betterment of one’s society. It is dependent on the security of person that can come only from supportive family and friendships and a society characterized by well-developed social infrastructure (e.g., public education, health care) and governed for economic and ecological stability.

*Mostly adapted from “Avoiding Collapse: An agenda for sustainable degrowth and relocalizing the economy”

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William Rees is an ecological economist Professor Emeritus and former director of the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning. The originator of eco-footprint analysis, he has an extensive opus of peer-reviewed articles on the biophysical prerequisites for sustainability in an era of accelerating ecological change. Dr. Rees was a founding director and past-president of the Canadian Society for Ecological Economics, a founding director of the One Earth Initiative and, a Fellow of the Post-Carbon Institute and the winner of several major international awards.

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This blog is part of the 'Voices of New Economies' series within Cities for People - an experiment in advancing the movement toward urban resilience and livability through connecting innovation networks. The Voices of New Economies series is collectively curated by One Earth and The Canadian CED Network. This series is an exploration of what it takes to build the economies we need - ones that work for people, places, and the planet. We are connecting key actors, finding patterns, noting interesting differences, and highlighting key concepts and initiatives. Together, this series offers insights into the new economies movement as it develops.

Ekistic Elements

The abscissa of ekistic units remains constant in all uses of the ekistic grid, and the most usual ordinate consists of the five ekistic elements, NATURE, ANTHROPOS (MAN), SOCIETY, SHELLS (dwellings or buildings), and NETWORKS, with a sixth line denoting their SYNTHESIS.

NATURE, the first element, represents the ecosystem within which rural settlements must exist. It involves a number of component processes including the hydrologic cycle, biosystems, airsheds, climatic zones, etc. Archaeological studies show that even primitive man with limited tools made profound changes in natural systems.

Overcultivation in the Thar desert of the Indian subcontinent and overgrazing in the Middle East are two examples of how early cultivations weighted the natural balance and tipped it towards an uninhabitable landscape. If such significant changes in the natural system could be brought about by such limited numbers of men, it seems logical to suppose that today's 6,000 million persons must have far greater effectiveness in fouling the planet.

And, if the earth is to support 30,000 million people in the future, the interrelationships and ranges of adaptability of human settlements and natural processes must be very clearly understood and observed, for neither can survive without the other. At another level we cannot forget man's psychological and physical needs for contact with the world of nature.

ANTHROPOS himself is also constantly adapting and changing. The medical profession, in its move from "barbarism" to concepts of the constitution of the healthy individual, can contribute many important inputs to the better organization of urban life. Studies have shown that certain physical and psychological diseases are directly associated with urbanization. These include obesity, respiratory ailments and alienation (anomie).

This gives rise to many questions, such as whether it is possible for mankind to adapt to a completely urban world with no rural escapes; what urban densities "are tolerable"; and how the city may be made a satisfactory environment for the growing child. Thus, just as forward-looking medical and public health schools find a need to study the city, city builders must turn to study man.

SOCIETY comprises all those aspects of the urban or rural scene that are commonly dealt with by sociologists, economists and administrators: population trends, social customs, income and occupations, and the systems of urban government. One of the most urgent aspects of society seems to be the problem of the retention, or reorganization, of values inherent in independent small communities after these have become incorporated in megalopolis — in other words, the place of the neighborhood in megalopolis.

SHELLS, or the built environment, is the traditional domain of the architectural and engineering professions. Here a central problem is how mass-produced, anonymous housing can cater for the needs of very diverse individuals and family groupings. Where can man make his own mark? Where can he leave the touch of his own hand?

NETWORKS provide the glue for all systems of urbanization. Their changes profoundly affect urban patterns and urban scale. We have only to think of the effect of the advent of the railroad, or of piped water supplies, or of the telephone, upon the extent, the texture and the densities of human settlements. The increasingly rapid developments of all types of networks — coupled with population pressures — have been the most potent heralds of megalopolis.

The enormous growth in the uses of energy for the communication of ideas has whetted man's appetite for participating in all sorts of things that were formerly outside his ken. The television screen has stimulated desires both to participate in new sports, such as skiing, etc., and to participate in debates — political representation, etc. To respond to man's demands, transportation, communication and utility networks must all expand even faster than the anticipated growth of settlements.

SYNTHESIS arises from a consideration of the interactions of all the ekistic elements in terms of a single ekistic unit: for example, the interactions of Nature, Man, Society, Shells and Networks may be considered in terms of megalopolis. Or Synthesis can comprise a single ekistic element in terms of the whole range of ekistic units: for example, the effect of certain aspects of society (changes in the birth rate) or networks (advent of the automobile) upon all scales of human settlements.

Again synthesis can arise from synergetic associations with the total result having positive benefits greater than the individual inputs; for example, a health facilities program and air pollution control in conjunction may lead to lower mortality rates than predicted by each of the independent programs.

The Original Sustainable Development

"Human settlements are no longer satisfactory for their inhabitants," Doxiadis wrote in the introduction to Ekistics: An Introduction to the Science of Human Settlements (1968: 5). The problem, he concluded, was that the elements of contemporary cities, such as transportation, zoning and communication, were no longer in balance. As a result, people suffered in cities that were too large, crowded and noisy, and that exacted too much damage on the surrounding natural environment. To solve these problems, Doxiadis proposed a new field of inquiry, the science of ekistics. Doxiadis envisioned ekistics, a name that derives from the ancient Greek term oikizo meaning "creating a settlement," as an interdisciplinary effort to "arrive at a proper conception and implementation of the facts, concepts, and ideas related to human settlement" (1968: 15).

According to Doxiadis, the greatest problem facing cities worldwide was the problem of managing growth. Far too often, he argued, city planners made inadequate provisions for urban growth and as a result cities would grow like cancers, the inner core eating into surrounding neighborhoods and the outer edges gobbling up the natural landscape. He proposed several solutions for rapidly growing cities, one of which was for city planners to leave room for expansion of the city core along a predetermined axis so that most urban expansion would be channeled in a single direction. This innovation would, he suggested, release the population pressure on the urban core while leading to a more orderly development of the outlying area. In cases where multiple metropolitan areas were growing together as a megalopolis Doxiadis suggested that new self-contained urban centers be created within the urban sprawl with improved communication and transportation links between them.

In later books, Doxiadis became increasingly interested in the philosophical underpinnings of urban development. In Anthropopolis: City for Human Development (1974) and Action for Human Settlements (1976), he suggested that planners must concentrate above all on making humane cities. Since the existence of big cities was inevitable, as was the proliferation of space-expanding technologies like automobiles and skyscrapers, Doxiadis concluded that planners must find ways to restore human scale to large cities. Some of his proposals included

• Limiting all buildings to three levels or less, with permission to build higher bestowed by national authorities.



• Separating automobile and pedestrian traffic completely, with automobiles consigned to underground conduits if possible.



• Constructing cities as a "beehive" of cells each no bigger than 2 by 2 kilometers, the maximum comfortable distance for pedestrians.

Ultimately, Doxiadis was optimistic that with proper planning the cities of the world would eventually mature into a stable and pleasant form he called the ecumenopolis. Doxiadis worked for more than a decade to establish an interdisciplinary community of scholars who would complete research on cities and the best ways to manage them. Ekistics, the journal Doxiadis founded, continues to publish articles on a wide range of urban topics. Although his work is rarely explicitly referenced in urban planning literature, many of his ideas have been integrated into mainstream academic and popular thought. The New Urbanism movement of the 1980s and 1990s, which suggested that small pedestrian friendly villages should replace typical suburban developments, echoed many of Doxiadis' suggestions (Calthorpe 1993, Leccese and McCormick 2000)

Ekistics by Konstantinos Doxiadis

In this book, Doxiadis proposes ekistics as a science of human settlements and outlines its scope, aims, intellectual framework and relevance. A major incentive for the development of the science is the emergence of increasingly large and complex settlements, tending to regional conurbations and even to a world-wide city (Doxiadis uses the work "ecumenopolis"). However, ekistics aims to encompass all scales of human habitation and seeks to learn from the archeological and historical record by looking not only at great cities, but, as much as possible, at the total settlement pattern.

What is Ekistics

EKISTICS is the science of human settlements.

EKISTICS (modern Greek: OIKISTIKH) is derived from the ancient Greek adjective oikistikoV more particularly from the neuter plural oikistika (as physics is derived from fusika, Aristotle). The ancient Greek adjective oikistikoV meant: "concerning the foundation of a house, a habitation, a city or colony; contributing to the settling." It was derived from oikistikhV, an ancient Greek noun meaning "the person who installs settlers in place". This may be regarded as deriving indirectly from another ancient Greek noun, o kisiV, meaning "building", "housing", "habitation", and especially "establishment of a colony, a settlement , or a town" (already in Plato), or "filling with new settlers", settling", "being settled". All these words grew from the verb oikizw, to settle and were ultimately derived from the noun o koV, "house", "home" or "habitat.

The shorter Oxford English Dictionary contains a reference to an oecist, oekist or oikist, defining him as: "the founder of an ancient Greek ... colony". The English equivalent of oikistikh is ekistics (a noun). In addition, the adjectives ekistic and ekistical, the adverb ekistically, and the noun ekistician are now also in current use. The French equivalent is ekistique, the German oekistik, the Italian echistica (all feminine).