ABSTRACT
Degrowth is an ideological strike against unquestioned faith in economic growth and a concrete demand to scale down society’s metabolism, to transition to more just and less materially and energetically intensive economies. But, what might ‘setting limits collectively’ look like at a municipal level? This chapter attempts to stir up debates on limits, scarcity and abundance in the city. Relying mainly on Murray Bookchin’s work, it is argued that urbanisation processes impose ‘scarcity’ (i.e. people’s inability to use their milieu to generate resources) by hampering vibrant, organic, political engagement. Therefore, degrowth municipalism will require creating an organic citizenship or the citification of urban space. Experiences of London (England) and Hanoi (Vietnam) illustrate how scarcity and abundance play out in urban lives. Following Bookchin, a distinction is made between ‘the city’ and ‘the urban’. A degrowth municipality, properly understood, would be oriented toward openness, collective sufficiency and organic abundance, i.e. multiplying relationships to develop a robust democratic system. Degrowth-oriented municipalism needs to avoid more rules and limits on urban residents in the name of sustainability and efficiency (the technocratic, authoritarian solution) and demographic shifts to the countryside (the localist solution) and, rather, institutionalise and cultivate an active, organic, urban political life.
