ABSTRACT
This chapter is a commentary on chapters by Jin Xue and Aaron Vansintjan in a book on housing for degrowth, in a part that functions as a discussion starter on urbanisation debates in the degrowth movement. The chapter starts with a snippet from field research into Vienna’s urban development, to acknowledge the specific character of the ‘local trap’, posing questions around degrowth perspectives with respect to a specific instance. In outlining dimensions of possible answers to the problem of urban growth from a place-specific perspective, using Vienna as an illustration, the chapter emphasises that degrowth should recognise multiple scales of politics. The sorts of real-world problems that confront the degrowth movement require practical as well as radical solutions that open up and safeguard possibilities of deeper future transformations. Although local solutions to local problems are reasonable and often feasible, many problems have an international, even global, dimension. The rise of cities as political actors propelled by a broader pro-urban discourse might point towards the promise of a progressive municipalism but might inappropriately bias degrowth measures at other particular scales, especially if the limitations of local politics go unnoticed and remain institutionally unchecked.
