Episodes

  • Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #34: Julia Grosinger

    Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #34: Julia Grosinger
    Apr 29 2026
    Episode #34 of “Becoming a post-growth planner: obstacles and challenges to changing roles and practices” with Dr Julia Grosinger (ICTA-UAB, Barcelona, Spain). In conversation with Dr Christian Lamker (University of Groningen, the Netherlands). "Post-growth planning is not happening on the grid; it's something which happens in the mindsets of people". Discussing spatial, social, and emotional aspects of degrowth in rural areas throughout Europe. Understanding 'the backbone of human survival' and distinct narratives and experiences in rural areas and small municipalities. Identifying loved keystone places in participatory methods, walking interviews, and arts-based research. Highlighting the role of planned and unplanned spaces for meeting and fulfilling human needs for identity, leisure, and participation. Beyond romanticising degrowth to understanding values like care, conviviality, and solidarity, in rural contexts and connecting to existing social and physical infrastructures - "because we cannot go back the way we came from".
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    30 mins
  • Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #33: Matthias Kranke & Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn

    Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #33: Matthias Kranke & Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn
    Apr 27 2026
    Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #33: Matthias Kranke & Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn Episode #33 of “Becoming a post-growth planner: obstacles and challenges to changing roles and practices” with Dr Matthias Kranke (College for the Social Sciences and Humanities of the University Alliance Ruhr/University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany) and Dr Malcolm Campbell-Verduyn (University of Groningen, the Netherlands). In conversation with Dr Christian Lamker (University of Groningen, the Netherlands). "You can't get beyond growth without really getting inside of it". Working through roads, ports, rails, and accounting and between growth and post-growth infrastructures. Moving the focal point from policy towards materiality and the realities of existing infrastructures. Reflecting on a special issue on post-growth infrastructures and several workshops. Criticising how infrastructures can facilitate 'ever more everything' (growth, consumption, production), and opening pathways in different spaces and places. Further extending thinking into bitcoins, crypto currencies, and ecological accounting. Finishing with the need for more political debates on infrastructures and how to take socio-material relations seriously to avoid post-growth planning as being myopic and failing to see infrastructures.
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    27 mins
  • Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #32: Anna Pagani

    Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #32: Anna Pagani
    Apr 23 2026
    Episode #32 of “Becoming a post-growth planner: obstacles and challenges to changing roles and practices” with Dr Anna Pagani (King's College London, United Kingdom). In conversation with Dr Christian Lamker (University of Groningen, the Netherlands). "We cannot think of any future if we do not think about housing!". Work with systems thinking and degrowth through housing markets in the United Kingdom. Pondering on housing as a basic need and experiences with housing associations and discussing a moratorium on new housebuilding. Challenging narratives around the housing crisis and the idea that building new means building better. Identifying leverage points for change and intervention in the housing system. Explaining perceptions of power (discursive, instrumental, structural) and organising packages of solutions by knowing about co-benefits and unintended consequences. Explaining the development, tensions, and intended uses of the 'Manifesto for housing in a post-growth world' for spatial planners today and tomorrow. Calling to action because "post-growth planning is a collective activity of mutual learning, and this mutual learning must be informed by a systems approach".
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    27 mins
  • Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #31: Alejandro del Castillo Sánchez

    Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #31: Alejandro del Castillo Sánchez
    Apr 20 2026
    Episode #31 of “Becoming a post-growth planner: obstacles and challenges to changing roles and practices” with Alejandro del Castillo Sánchez (Architect, n'UNDO, Spain/Colombia). In conversation with Dr Christian Lamker (University of Groningen, the Netherlands). "It's completely possible". Doing, undoing, and redoing. How do we change that big paradigm of architecture: building is growing, growing is welfare, and it's also progress and happiness? Discussing the intersection between architecture, territory and eco-social transition. Connecting post-growth theory to realities in architecture and tourism development along the Mediterranean coastline in Spain. Exploring the scope and the edges of (growth-based) architecture over 15 years to find new ways of bringing value to the territory. Using systems thinking to identify sweet spots between system change, action, and interventions. Learning from real sustainability transformations that are already working. In the end: "Post-growth planning is applying an approach that prioritizes the reduction of territorial and material metabolism, promotes the restoration of ecological functionality, and the reconfiguration of social and spatial systems through an eco-centric paradigm, mainly by undoing rather than producing the built environment."
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    29 mins
  • Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #30: Anitra Nelson

    Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #30: Anitra Nelson
    Apr 1 2026
    Episode #30 of “Becoming a post-growth planner: obstacles and challenges to changing roles and practices” with Dr Anitra Nelson (University of Melbourne, Australia). In conversation with Dr Christian Lamker (University of Groningen, the Netherlands). "Post-growth plannng is opening a debate and action on a social and material transformation to a more equitable and just relation between us and between us and earth". Talking about the work on the 'Routledge Handbook of Degrowth' (published in 2025) and looking back and forward on history and futures of degrowth, post-growth, and housing. Focusing on horizontalism and explicit and implicit horizontal approaches in the degrowth movement. Explaining experiences with eco-collaborative housing communities and intentional collective housing. Uncovering conflicts and tensions between degrowth and cities, as well as showing prefigurative examples therein. How might we plan for mare sharing, caring, and commoning?
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    27 mins
  • Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #29: Sofia Greaves

    Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #29: Sofia Greaves
    Mar 25 2026
    Episode #29 of “Becoming a post-growth planner: obstacles and challenges to changing roles and practices” with Dr Sofia Greaves (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway). In conversation with Dr Christian Lamker (University of Groningen, the Netherlands). "Post-Growth Planning is in need of creative methods for collectively imagining new futures". Reflecting on experiences with artists and arts-based methods in Thamesmead, London. Pondering on the question how art can be a form of research, of generating new narratives and stories, and a contribution to community-building. Working through tensions within artists and dangers of artwashing. Delving into recent projects moving from arts to engineering in Oslo and transdisciplinary research that integrates music, sounds, and painting, into environmental engineering. Uncovering the vortex of flow and creating an album of fluid motion that includes stories and experiences as data. Advocating for an emotional planning and the question how we might bring that kind of data into decision-making.
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    28 mins
  • Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #28: Christian Schulz

    Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #28: Christian Schulz
    Jan 12 2026
    Episode #28 of “Becoming a post-growth planner: obstacles and challenges to changing roles and practices” with Prof Dr Christian Schulz (University of Luxembourg). In conversation with Dr Christian Lamker (University of Groningen, the Netherlands). "Within the discipline, there is something going in…". Reflecting on a decade of post-growth thinking in economic geography and spatial planning. Following diverse understandings and misunderstandings and post-growth practices in central Europe. Focusing on horizontal replication, learning, and regional perspectives. Understanding the importance of the social dimension in a post-growth transformation. Taking up the democratic idea and democratic challenge, e.g., towards critical thinking regarding housing policies and questions of land and land ownership. Identifying future hope in young scholars, students, and growing engagement in the discipline. Utilising experience from own research projects and two research-practice working groups on post-growth geographies and well-being.
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    28 mins
  • Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #27: Sophie Sturup

    Becoming a Post-Growth Planner #27: Sophie Sturup
    Mar 27 2025
    Episode #27 of “Becoming a post-growth planner: obstacles and challenges to changing roles and practices” with Dr Sophie Sturup (Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University, China). In conversation with Dr Christian Lamker (University of Groningen, the Netherlands). "What kind of humans would populate the world that is actually sustainable?" Looking beyond individualism and the multiple beings, we are, and we can be in the world. Explaining the dangers of conceptualizing ourselves as separate from everything else. Using insights from Aboriginal thinking in Australia to remind science and ourselves about exposure to other worlds and the imperfection of language. Each of us matters, and the collective is me - working towards responsibility as something we take on as a duty of care to others. Pondering on own pathways into academia, towards governmentality, transport planning, public-private partnerships, and post-growth. Calling for authority and authenticity to speak in opportunities of participatory planning. Post-growth planning is not just an idea; it is something we must actually do.
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    32 mins