Post-growth, degrowth, the doughnut and circular economy: a short guide

City officials have discovered the potential of post-growth thinking for orienting urban policy making and interventions. Many cities in Europe, and elsewhere, have been flirting with the idea of post-growth. Some cities (https://www.amsterdam.nl/en/policy/sustainability/circular-economy/) have fully engaged with Kate Raworth’s concept of the doughnut economy and applied it to their institutional policy making process (e.g. Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, Glasgow). There are also cities that have not explicitly used the doughnut tool but have instead preferred to focus on other repertoires and terminologies, such as the Wellbeing Economy (https://weall.org/). Yet, there is hardly any public administration that has embraced the term degrowth (often preferring ‘municipalism’ instead). Meanwhile, degrowth has become rather common among urban and environmental activists, designers, and architects.