Dr. Federico Savini, Associate Professor of Environmental Planning, Institutions and Politics at the University of Amsterdam, gave an enlightening presentation as part of our SEICA Open Seminar Series.

During his presentation ‘Strategic planning for degrowth: what, who, how’ he first unpacked the so called ‘strategic thought’ in degrowth research. This is a research field of degrowth that is particularly concerned with the tactics and processes that bring about degrowth as a wider socio-ecological transition. What are the key challenges? Second, he argued why and how strategic spatial planning can be an important tool in this transition. Dr. Savini illustrated his arguments with the example of the so called ‘doughnut vision’ in Amsterdam. His presentation sparked an inspired conversation between attendees. Is it realistic to believe that ideological change resulting in systems of degrowth can happen?

You can find the presented paper here. The paper incited a response from dr. Yvonne Rydin, which can be found here. Dr. Savini then replied with an article that is available here.