Anthony Averbeck

THE GROWTH PROBLEMATIC

Contradictions of the Modern Growth Paradigm Manifested in an Increasingly Imbalanced Capitalist World System

“Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth.”  

                TIM JACKSON, “PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH: ECONOMICS FOR A FINITE PLANET”

“Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist,” noted British economist Kenneth Boulding.[1] His pointed vindication of the growth expectation comes in the midst of an era of statistically unprecedented growth. In the contemporary world system, the concept of growth is primarily understood in terms of capital accumulation and economic prosperity dependent upon consumption.[2] Secondarily, it plays out in several variables, including increasing population, resource consumption growth, a rising GDP, and a growing real estate market. For the past fifty years, global population has increased more rapidly than ever before. Global population in 1950 stood at 2.5 billion. In 2005, there were 6.5 billion people. By 2050, the United Nations projects this number could rise to more than 9 billion.[3] Moreover, in 2009, the global population living in urban areas (3.42 billion) had, for the first time, exceeded those living in rural areas (3.41 billion). By 2050, the global urban population is expected to increase by eighty-four percent to 6.3 billion.[4] By this time, a complete reversal will have occurred since the turn of the century, a leap from 25% to nearly 75% of the global population living in cities. The 10,000,000+ club of Megacities continues to add to its ranks. In 1975, there were just three (Tokyo, New York, and Mexico City). Today, there are twenty-two, and by 2025 it is projected that there will be 25 or more.[5]

Despite the convenience of accepting growth at face value; or rather, celebrating generalized phenomena of “increase” as the positive that social convention of the modern era assumes it to be, the nuanced nature of ‘growth’ simply cannot be ignored. Several contradictions exist behind the veil of the Modern paradigm of growth. In a world of finite resources with severe environmental limitations, economist Tim Jackson argues that a binary characterization is being increasingly defined, of “islands of prosperity within oceans of poverty…with ever-increasing incomes for the already rich.”[6] On the one hand, this can be understood geographically, where urbanization crossed the 50% threshold in the majority of developed regions around 1950, while some less developed regions are yet to cross this threshold.[7] Additionally, the majority of unsustainable population growth is occurring in “less developed” countries, while “more developed” countries are easing into stability. (Figure 2) Moreover, a fifth of the world population earns only two percent of global income.[8] People in developed countries not only earn more, but also have a much higher per capita consumption. The United States, with ten times the population, consumes 320 times the resources that Kenya does.[9] On the whole, countries considered “first world” consume 32 times the resources (i.e. oil, metals, wood) and at the same time, produce 32 times the externalities (i.e. greenhouse gas emissions, pollution) of the “developed world.”[10]

While the contradictions of the growth paradigm can be seen from a wide lens to have very specific and far-reaching consequences, no end is in sight for the decoupling of growth from the accumulation of capital barring a revolutionary change to the paradigm. This paper will examine the specifically spatial contradictions inherent to the modern growth paradigm that presently, and has for hundreds of years, enframed our understanding of the human condition. Related social theories on binary opposition framing our understanding of the world, coupled with economic theories on the growth paradigm of the contemporary world system will be utilized to explain the origins of the ever-apparent ‘winner takes all’ condition that continues, with increasing intensity, to create spatial, social, economic, and ecological inequality in the world system. Finally, sources for optimism will be examined as movements for paradigm change are slowly gaining traction.

[1] Tim Jackson, “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet,” xi

[2] Niko Paech, “The Economy in the Aftermath of Growth,” 24

[3] “Human Population,” Population Reference Bureau, 2016

[4] “Urban and Rural Areas Report, 2009,” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division

[5] “Urban and Rural Areas Report, 2009,” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division

[6] Tim Jackson, “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet,” 4

[7] Ibid

[8] Tim Jackson, “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet,” 5

[9] Jared Diamond, “What’s Your Consumption Factor?” New York Times, January 2, 2008

[10] Ibid

CRITICAL THEORY : UNDERPINNINGS OF THE MODERN GROWTH PROBLEMATIC

Since the beginning of the industrial era two hundred years ago, the concept of growth has been normalized by social convention. Sociologist Henri Lefebvre asserts that industrialization ultimately characterizes modern society. It follows then, he reasons, that the industrial economy underpins the modern urban growth paradigm, and subsequently, its problematic outcomes:

“Beyond any doubt, this process (industrialization) has been the dynamic of transformations in society for the last century and a half. If one distinguishes between the inductor and the induced, one can say that the process of industrialization is inductive and that one can count among the induced, problems related to growth and planning, questions concerning the city and development of the urban reality, without omitting the growing importance of leisure activities and questions related to culture.”[1]

Lefebvre goes on to assert that the industrialization of the organic, naturally-originating city entity by the capitalist bourgeoise essentially created a constructed, artificial network of cities with a “certain division of labor” between spatial regions “linked together by road, river, and seaways and by commercial and banking relations.”[2] The resultant of this constructed network is spatial inequality. “What is erected on the base (of division of labor between cities) is the State, or centralized power. Cause and effect of this particular centrality, that of power, one city wins over the others: the capital.”[3] In other words, the use value inherent to the natural urban reality has been usurped, argues Lefebvre, by the exchange value and the “generalization of commodities by industrialization.”[4]

If not an inherent law of nature then, growth can perhaps best be understood as an outcome of, and subsequently, a social convention of modernity. The modern constitution, as outlined by Bruno Latour, constructs the world in terms of a first order dichotomy of humanity and nature, and secondarily by the assignment of hybrid structures thereafter.[5] Latour credits modernity, notwithstanding its faults, with finally making it possible to distinguish between the “laws of external nature and the “conventions of society.”[6] Importantly, as Shiqiao Li notes, these social conventions have come to define needs that are constructed, rather than innate.[7] Such constructed At its core, this social construction of needs can be credited with the creation of binary oppositions between cultural signifiers: concepts of urbanity and nature, core and periphery, civilized and untamed, valuable and value-less, growth and decline.

Not coincidentally, Latour’s model of binary opposition in modernity has theoretical parallels to Immanuel Wallerstein’s core-periphery model of spatial stratification in the contemporary world system, and the fundamental role that cities play in the accumulation of capital. Both models explain the expectation of growth; whether broadly growth of capital, or more specifically, the growth of the cities and regions that act as spatial condensers of the production and exchange of capital. Ferdinand Braudel echoes Wallerstein’s theories as he describes a small but powerful core surrounded by a larger middle ground and a vast periphery. The world economy depends substantially, he argues, on the very existence of the core-periphery spatial hierarchy. “There is no such thing as a world-economy without its own area with a center…in short, we may deduce that a world economy is the sum of individualized areas, economic and non-economic, which it brings together.”[8] Spatially, he argues, the “great city” dominates the countryside in an unequal exchange.[9] Braudel further notes that the binary opposition of the core-periphery model of the world system produces a dichotomous relationship between the have and have not’s: a core characterized by “everything that is most advanced and diversified” contradicted by a periphery that represents “backwardness, archaism, and exploitation by others.”[10]

[1] Henri Lefebvre, “Writings on Cities,” Part II: The Right to the City, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 65

[2] Henri Lefebvre, “Writings on Cities,” Part II: The Right to the City, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 67

[3] Ibid

[4] Ibid

[5] Li Shiqiao, “Think Different”, World Contemporary Architecture, lecture, Charlottesville, VA, April 12, 2016

[6] Bruno Latour, “We Have Never Been Modern,” Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 130

[7] Li Shiqiao, “Resisting Capitalism”, World Contemporary Architecture, lecture, Charlottesville, VA, March 22, 2016

[8] Ferdinand Braudel, “Divisions of Space and Time in Europe,” 24

[9] Ferdinand Braudel, “Divisions of Space and Time in Europe,” 39

[10] Ferdinand Braudel, “Divisions of Space and Time in Europe,” 39

PROSPERITY AS DEFINED BY THE NEOLIBERAL ECONOMY

Theory, therefore, helps to contextualize our contemporary understanding of growth in terms of a constructed sense of prosperity in terms of a constructed world of binary opposition. “The prevailing response (to growth),” notes Tim Jackson, “is to cast prosperity in economic terms and to call for continuing economic growth as the means to deliver it…cashed out (almost literally) as an increase in gross domestic product per capita…broadly speaking a measure of ‘economic activity’ in a nation or region.”[1] German economist Niko Paech similarly characterizes the modern growth paradigm as one wholly dependent on “growth and subsequent pressure for growth.”[2] The contemporary world system, argues Paech, creates economic pressure for a “growth” that has since the Industrial Revolution been based on the endless accumulation of capital; manifested by the expectation of high profits, interest-earning, an external supply of resources “based on a model of global division of labor,” and a culture of “unquestioning pursuit of material self-actualisation.”[3] This prevailing metric by which growth is defined in terms of a constructed sense of prosperity is so deeply engrained in our contemporary discourse that it seems unfathomable to conceive of it in any other way. Duly notes Jackson: “Growth in the GDP is taken for granted. Reams and reams have been written about what it’s based on, who’s best at making it happen, and what to do if it stops happening. Far less is written about why we might want it in the first place.”[4] With this understanding, it follows that society values the exchange value of commodities to such an extent that the ultimate metric for measuring them (economic growth and prosperity) usurps all other considerations, and allows society to effectively block out the externalities of the system as we continue to foster the growth paradigm.

[1] Tim Jackson, “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet,” 3

[2] Niko Paech, “The Economy in the Aftermath of Growth,” 26

[3] Ibid

[4] Tim Jackson, “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet,” 4

PRICED OUT OF THE CITY

“Living in a superstar city is like owning a scarce luxury good.”

            PETER COY, BUSINESSWEEK, AUGUST 4, 2006

If the modern growth paradigm is defined by an increasing GDP, accomplished by the accumulation of capital, then it follows that a growth-seeking economy depends on a means of commodity production. Such productivity needs land, a spatial condenser of production. As such, Lefebvre notes that cities have long been co-opted by the world system as “markets, sources of available capital, the places where these capitals are managed, reservoirs of labour…which enables the growth of surplus value.”[1] As has been established, the inherent use value of cities have long ago been appropriated by the world system in favor of its constructed exchange value. Lefebvre assails the appropriation of cities for the service of economic growth, pointedly noting that “Where there is a pre-existing network of old cities, industry assails it. It appropriates this network and refashions it according to its needs.”[2]

At present, one of the most demonstrable instances of city appropriation by the world system is playing out in the increasingly-apparent spatial polarization between growth and decline of cities in the world system, where the core-periphery model is present as a microcosm of the larger system’s winner-takes-all model. As specific urban centers continue to win in the game of capital accumulation, they are becoming increasingly exclusive enclaves of wealth, knowledge, and power. Such cities are not necessarily geographically divided, but as architect and theorist Shiqiao Li suggests, increasingly divided typologically.[3] As such, pockets of ‘growth’ are increasingly being dispersed, irrespective of geographical location, as amalgamations of similarly economically prosperous activity. Often, argues economist Richard Florida, these cities serve as spatial condensers of technological knowledge, innovation, and entrepreneurship.[4] Florida cites such cities as amalgamations of the “creative class,” an economic group of “knowledge workers” directly contributing to the “knowledge economy.”[5] While the creative class grows, other sectors of the economy diminish. (Figure 1) Geographically, this means that cities and regions well-equipped for the knowledge economy (meaning, either incubators of knowledge itself or providing a cheap labor base for the production of goods to service the knowledge cores) are generally growing. Cities and regions that do neither, including but not limited to the post-industrial, are increasingly characterized by shrink, decline, and stagnation. In the United States and other advanced economies, this growing spatial disparity is playing out alongside higher income inequality than was present 20 years ago. (Figure 3) For the first time since 1960, the number of rich families has increased every decade, while middle-class incomes have been stagnant, a trend that started long before the recession.[6]  

In the United States, the number of high income individuals has increased nationally, but especially in select urban cores known by economists as “superstar cities.”[7] (Figure 4) Characterized as a growing number of cities with “scare land leading to bidding up-of and prices and sorting of high-income families relatively more into desirable, unique, low housing construction markets,” included in the ranks are such cities as San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, and Portland.[8] Real estate economists Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai have documented the phenomena of more and more people being priced out of major metropolitan areas due to two principal causes; “an inelastic supply of land in some unique locations combined with an increasing number of high-income households nationally.”[9] Inelasticity of supply can be due, the economists note, to either geographic restrictions or regulatory limits.[10] When these locations are desired by a large enough share of the population, excess demand and limited supply leave them increasingly available only to those able to pay the premium. In their analysis of housing prices across U.S. cities, the economists conclude that, despite widespread appreciation over time across all geographic locations, there is an ever-widening gap apparent in the price of housing between the most expensive metropolitan areas and average or stagnating ones.[11] In 1950, the gap in housing prices between the most expensive cities and the others was 2:1. By 2000, the gap had quadrupled.[12] This growing spatial disparity has numerous consequences. Cautions the team of economists:

“Because high house prices disproportionately crowd out lower-income potential residents, the evolution of entire metropolitan areas into superstars influences the way we spatially organize our society. Mere population growth forces residency in preferred cities and towns effectively to be auctioned off to the highest bidder, without existing landowners in those places benefitting from the rise in prices.”[13]

As more cities are added to the ranks of megacity, superstar city, or whatever the nomenclature may be for specific typologies of ‘growing’ cores in Richard Florida’s knowledge economy, inequality increases alongside “growth.” The gap widens between the winners and losers, the have and have not’s as a spatial microcosm of the larger issue of growing economic disparity. The small core is growing at the expense of the vast periphery; an increasingly-apparent contradiction that serves as a timely reminder of the growth problematic in the capitalist world system.

[1] Henri Lefebvre, “Writings on Cities,” Part II: The Right to the City, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 69

[2] Henri Lefebvre, “Writings on Cities,” Part II: The Right to the City, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 70

[3] Li Shiqiao, “World Environments”, World Contemporary Architecture, lecture, Charlottesville, VA, April 12, 2016

[4] Richard Florida, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” 48

[5] Richard Florida, “The Rise of the Creative Class,” 48

[6] Ibid

[7] Gary Peters, “Population Growth is Still the Biggest Problem Facing Humanity,” Business Insider, July 4, 2010

[8] Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai, “Superstar Cities”

[9] Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai, “Superstar Cities”

[10] Ibid

[11] Joseph Gyourko, Christopher Mayer, and Todd Sinai, “Superstar Cities”

[12] Ibid

[13] Ibid

SHRINKSPACE

“The Epoch of Growth has come to an end. Since the beginning of industrialization around two hundred years ago, growth has become an expectation. The epoch of modernity was characterized by comprehensive growth. For the past two hundred years, city planning has been almost exclusively focused on facilitating the process of growth. The same is true of the economy, which is why there is a theory of growth in economics and not a theory of shrinkage.”

           PHILIPP OSWALT, ARCHITECT, DIRECTOR OF BAUHAUS DESSAU FOUNDATION, SHRINKING CITIES: VOLUME 1

In the wake of growing core cities in the knowledge economy is the equal and opposite phenomenon of cities, towns, and regions in the shrink as a result of structural crisis. Shrink-space includes spatial regions that have fallen victim to de-industrialization and globalization as the world economic system continues to expand its influence by further widening the core-periphery spatial disparity. As this polarization plays out spatially, Phillip Oswalt cautions that there are deep social implications: “Not everyone profits from growth, and societies are increasingly being divided into winners and losers. Shrinkage in one place feeds growth in another. The process of shrinkage we are seeing more and more of is not simply a reversal of growth. Rather, growth is replaced by a sideward drift of societies, whereby the opposite trends of growth and shrinkage can run parallel.”[1] Despite its predominance and the varied problems inherent to it, however, Oswalt notes that shrinkage has been too often ignored as an “accident and exception to the concept of growth.”[2] In contrast with the 200-year old growth paradigm of modernity, which has been spurned by such values that provide fodder for the endless accumulation of capital (i.e. colonization, purchasing land for construction, urbanization, and increasing density), the shrinking city, town, or region has largely been seen as an unintended consequence. As a result of its lack of economic growth and prosperity, shrink-space has been relegated to the periphery, where in Wallerstein’s model the core continues to dominate the periphery in an unequal exchange. In the United States and other advanced economies, this increasingly imbalanced spatial stratification is directly stands in parallel with the fact that income inequality is higher than it was 20 years ago.[3] Increasingly, therefore, the spatial polarization of shrink-space and the super-star city stands as perhaps the most evident manifestation of the growing imbalance in the world system; all a resultant of the growth paradigm problematic. After the predicted end of statistical global population growth in 2070, Phillip Oswalt predicts that, necessarily, “growth and shrinking will be in a state of equilibrium and mutual determination.”[4]

This predicted stasis, note the authors of Shrinking Cities, Volume 1 for the German Cultural Foundation, is not necessarily a negative. In fact, defining shrink only in terms of a negative opposite to growth is further evidence of the enframing power of the modern growth paradigm. The authors argue that, “just as growth is not always experienced as a positive process—think of housing shortages, the crises following unification of the German empire, the pollution of early industrialization, and the slums in today’s megalopolises—shrinkage will not always be experienced as a negative trend.”[5] In fact, theorists and planners increasingly point to the potential inherent in shrink-space for creating a new, more sustainable model for “development”—one not based on the growth paradigm, but instead a planning approach that emphasizes the building of community and culture instead of physical commodity-space. “This weak planning,” note the Shrinking Cities researchers, “will increasingly use soft tools because often cultural development, forms of communication, and the rise of social networks and processes shape urban development more than construction itself does.”[6] They continue, suggesting that the question remains whether or not there may be new and revolutionary “forms of intervention in addition to the classic mode of development through construction which can influence the way in which a city develops…a fundamental shift in emphasis from the physical conditions to the social configurations and to the questions of use.”[7] With this paradigm shift away from conventional growth necessitated by shrink-space, perhaps the most optimistic of outcomes is the potential for new actors in the game of city-making more akin to the greek city-state than the contemporary city (again, use-value v. exchange value):

“The development of a new architectural language and of new typologies for the construction of buildings and cities is not the only result of these endeavors. Equally important was the formation of new actors, such as cooperatives serving as property developers; new legal, planning, and financial instruments; and a radical new understanding of municipal tasks—and ultimately a new model of society.”[8]

[1] Ibid

[2] Ibid

[3] Tim Jackson, “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet,” 5

[4] Philipp Oswalt, “Hypotheses on Urban Shrinking in the 21st Century,” ShrinkingCities Project: 2009

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid

[8] Philipp Oswalt, “Hypotheses on Urban Shrinking in the 21st Century,” ShrinkingCities Project: 2009

REVOLUTION

"People can flourish without more stuff. A new vision of governance does make sense. Another world is possible.”

                 TIM JACKSON, ‘PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH’, 171

A primary source of hope is that despite increasing evidence of spatial and ecological injustice in the contemporary world system, humans are not inherently selfish. Tim Jackson optimistically notes that, despite selfish ambitions evolving in humans that offer certain competitive advantages, evolution “does not preclude moral, social, and altruistic behaviors.”[1] Rather, all societies structure themselves as a certain model of compromise between individual and group needs, both necessary to our survival. Increasingly, however, consumer society in the world system favors an individualistic pursuit of materialistic capital over altruistic concerns over the collective good of society and nature. Growth, notes Jackson, “calls on us to be myopic, individualistic novelty seekers, because that’s exactly what’s needed to perpetuate the economic system.”[2] With the increasing polarization that has come to characterize the contemporary world system perpetuating a debt-driven economy based on endless consumption and disregard for ecological stability, the situation seems hopelessly problematic in achieving an equitable future. That is, unless we conceive of a new ethic.

Echoing the call to action by researchers in the shrinking city think tanks, several movements are gaining traction in architecture and planning that propose a limit-based, socially-oriented paradigm for developing the spatial landscape of a post-growth economy. Among the most notable practitioners dealing with spatial justice are Alfredo Brillembourg, Glenn Murcutt, and Teddy Cruz. Brillemourg, founder of Urban-Think Tank in Caracas, Venezuela, actively engages with spatial justice as his firm attempts to redefine the role of the architect in a post-growth economy. The firm’s work focuses on design innovations for rapid and incremental informal settlement upgrades in mostly developing world situations. In an interview with Archinect, Brillembourg notes that a primary impetus for his work is the fact that “if in the next 20 years we don’t find a turnaround, we will see cities growing out of control to the detriment of humans (though perhaps to the benefit of concentrated finance and insecurity).”[3] Brillembourg points to the theories of Lefebvre as inspiration for his multi-disciplinary approach to architecture, “going back to some of the experiments of the sixties and seventies into ecology, systems thinking, and the organizing of a socially-oriented society proposed by Henri Lefebvre.”[4] This transformation, notes Brillembourg, is part of a growing movement of a new generation of architects for which the physical building “is not the transformative object,” who instead aspire to a “kind of zeitgeist and try to become mediators in a cultural process.”[5] For Brillembourg, architecture is his vehicle for changing the growth paradigm: “It’s my vengeance against the inconsistencies and inequalities that I see happening in the world…I use the language of architecture, or let’s say my professional capacity, to talk about the city, because ultimately the city and the buildings that punctuate it are the best reflection of our culture.”[6] Likewise, Teddy Cruz defines the impetus for his practice as “questioning of the long established norms and codifications of cartographic representation and what they sustain in the power relationships of the world…the socio-economic constructions of first, second, and third tiers…looking closely into the mechanisms of crisis, shortage, and sufficiency.”[7] In a practice looking to directly challenge trans-border urbanisms, Cruz points to an effort to challenge the “powerlessness” of architecture due to “unprecedented deployment of neoliberal economic recipes of privatization, homogenization, and control everywhere” leaving architects “subordinated to the visionless environments defined by the bottom-line urbanism of the developer’s spreadsheet.”[8] Glenn Murcutt similarly points to his capacity as an architect to challenge inequalities perpetuated by the growth paradigm, albeit with a more focused approach on the making of the physical building itself as it interacts in symbiosis with ecological systems. “Stating in an interview for ArchDaily that his practice is “devoted to the environment…taking into account where materials come from, the energy to process it…to avoid the loss of material.”[9] This practice of “touching the ground lightly” has “nothing to do with style” or the conventional values of contemporary architecture as it finds itself increasingly co-opted for the interests of the capitalist world system.[10]

At the larger economic systems scale, society needs to escape what Tim Jackson refers to as the “iron cage of capitalism,” and its constructed values of growth and prosperity in the service of capital accumulation that benefits the few while underserving the many. German economist Niko Paech goes so far as to argue that moving beyond the modern growth paradigm is not simply just a well-intentioned desire, but an absolute necessity to the long-term survival of society. “The economic foundations of growth are being eroded,” he notes, as our consumer society “based on the unlimited and cheap supply of fossil energy” faces a crisis of supply.[11] Peak oil will inevitably become “peak everything.”[12] Optimistically, perhaps this will translate, finally, to a recognition that the growth myth contradicts the peak of one of the most essential of metrics: human happiness. Paech argues that “overfilled life styles and ultimately a society as a whole” can be freed from “energy slaves, consumption and comfort crutches” without foregoing anything, but rather ridding themselves from unhealthy superfluous consumption that creates a strain on “time, money, space, and ecological resources” alike without real, appreciable returns or benefit aside from the constructed myth of the capitalist world system.[13] Paech proposes a formulaic solution for the post-growth economy that he believes has the potential to uncouple itself from its dependencies on the capitalist world system, based on five key strategies:

1.     “Cutting Down, Slowing Down”

“Consumer desires should be mitigated so that they can be met by sustainable solutions.”[14]

2.     Balancing Self-Sufficiency and Dependency on Consumerism

“Self-work, urban subsistence, community gardens, exchange rings, networks of aid, etc. would contribute towards gradual de-globalisation.”[15]

3.     Regional Economy

“Many needs could be met by regional markets (with) shortened supply chains…concepts like community supported agriculture. Regional currencies could ensure that purchasing power stays in the region.”[16]

4.     Material Zero-Sum

“Products and infrastructures could be optimized, opening up untapped possibilities for lengthening product life-cycles or intensifying their use to such an extent that value could be created with no need for extra material production.”[17]

5.     Institutional Innovation

“There is a long overdue introduction of a system to assess, attribute, and cap environmental burdens so that the broad sustainability concept is concretized by personal CO2 accounts. Everybody would have the right to the same annual emissions quota.”[18]

Ultimately, only with recognizing the enframing power of the modern growth paradigm, and subsequently, the demands of the capitalist world system, can we conceive of a new paradigm for progress. A new kind of macro-economics not entrenched in the accumulation of capital through prosperity is conceivable, argues Tim Jackson. Niko Paech echoes this optimism for a new paradigm. “The conflict of goals between environmental considerations and an economic system based on the industrial division of labor and the established monetary system is not only resolvable, but even reversible,” he argues.[19] “According to this paradigm,” he reasons, “our efforts to mitigate climate change and other externalities actually open up new economic opportunities for future growth markets. As a consequence, the basic framework of established industrial and consumer patterns would remain the same-although with a renewed, namely (more) ecological content.”[20] Economists and scholars agree that markets, money, and consumer goods do not need to be completely eradicated in a post-growth economy. We simply need to evolve from our contemporary “culture of exorbitance,” as Paech refers to it. “It is the size of the dose that makes it poisonous,” he aptly notes.[21] Ultimately, as has been established, the first step to recognition and change is acknowledging the enframing power of the growth paradigm over contemporary society as a social construct not inherent to the laws of nature that can be transformed if society wills it. If growth can be understood as a social construct of modernity, then the expectation of growth is fluid. Precisely because of this, there is hope for a more sustainable and equitable future.

[1] Tim Jackson, “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet,” 163

[2] Ibid

[3] Laura Amaya, “Interview with Alfredo Brillembourg, Founder of Urban-Think Tank,” Archinect. April 10, 2015.

[4] Laura Amaya, “Interview with Alfredo Brillembourg, Founder of Urban-Think Tank,” Archinect. April 10, 2015.

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid

[7] Sevin Yildiz, “With Teddy Cruz on ‘Power’ and ‘Powerlessness’,” Archinect, November 19, 2009.

[8] Ibid

[9] Irina Vinnitskaya, “Interview: Glenn Murcutt Talking Heads,” ArchDaily, February 25, 2012.

[10] Ibid

[11] Niko Paech, “The Economy in the Aftermath of Growth,” 26

[12] Niko Paech, “The Economy in the Aftermath of Growth,” 26

[13] Niko Paech, “The Economy in the Aftermath of Growth,” 26

[14] Niko Paech, “The Economy in the Aftermath of Growth,” 26

[15] Niko Paech, “The Economy in the Aftermath of Growth,” 27

[16] Ibid

[17] Ibid

[18] Ibid

[19] Niko Paech, “The Economy in the Aftermath of Growth,” 24

[20] Ibid

[21] Niko Paech, “The Economy in the Aftermath of Growth,” 27