Towards post-growth cities: the cultural politics of mobility transitions in Barcelona and London

Post-growth planning is an urgent new paradigm seeking to reorient urban development goals away from economic growth and towards ecological and social well-being. So far, however, this emerging field has overlooked the fundamental role of cultural politics in enabling such a shift. In response, our research foregrounds 'the cultural' as a vital site of political struggles over meaning and applies this to the recent backlash against progressive urban mobility initiatives, focusing on Superblocks in Barcelona and Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods in London.

Combining ethnographic work and participatory workshops with a novel interdisciplinary analysis of urban history, affect and imaginaries, we aim to bring new humanities-informed perspectives to questions of post-growth urban transitions usually dominated by social-scientific and technical disciplines. In doing so, we seek to find innovative pathways for communities to overcome polarisation and collectively re-imagine an alternative cultural politics of urban change that engages with the transformative potential of post-growth.

Principal Investigator: Mrs Catarina Heeckt, London School of Economics and Political Science