Cities Beyond Growth is a transnational project funded by the European Union’s Erasmus+ programme, which brought together six civil society organisations from five European cities – Transnational Institute (TNI) and Commons Network from Amsterdam (Netherlands), Oikos from Ghent (Belgium), FUHEM from Madrid (Spain), NaZemi from Brno (Czechia), and Institut za političku ekologiju (IPE) from Zagreb (Croatia) – around a shared conviction: that the transition towards sustainable and climate-resilient cities requires not only technical solutions, but a fundamental shift in how we understand the economy, care, and democratic participation.
The project’s starting point is that growth-oriented economic models are no longer sustainable – ecologically, socially, or politically. Any economy that aspires to deliver decent living conditions for present and future generations must operate within planetary boundaries. This means moving beyond growth as the organising logic of urban development, and towards a post-growth economy built on wellbeing, sufficiency, and democratic self-determination.
The Cities Beyond Growth Project focuses on the educational dimension of fostering the needed change. Between 2024 and 2026, the project designed, tested, and refined a two-part educational programme – a general online course and locally adapted in-person module – delivered to approximately 1300 stakeholders globally and subsequently across six specific cities. The goal was not only to build knowledge, but to design educational processes to directly empower communities and local government representatives to become agents of inclusive, democratic post-growth transitions in their own cities.
Specific objectives:
1) To develop an education and training model for citizens, businesses, and local governments in six European cities on the role and opportunities of post-growth strategies in the transition to more sustainable societies.
2) To create a multi-stakeholder dialogue for all citizens and generations around the post-growth transformation, thereby simultaneously addressing climate change and inequality.
3) To develop an educational manual and a primer for post-growth cities that will focus on a new set of skills centered on collaboration, solidarity, and negotiation through peer support and diverse deliberative methods to enhance their engagement in the process and the integration of their needs into the planning of future plans and policies aligned with post-growth.
The training delivered will include a general introductory module on the conceptual framework of post-growth applied to the urban context, exploring associated concepts such as the doughnut economy, community wealth creation, and universal basic services. In turn, each partner will develop tailored modules, with different approaches and selected target groups, to empower local stakeholder networks to facilitate the transition to a post-growth city.
Project partners:
Transnational Institute (leading partner, the Netherlands), IPE, FUHEM (Spain), Oikos (Belgium), NaZemi (Czechia), Commons Network (the Netherlands)
Funding:
This project is funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus+ Programme.
