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COMMENTARY: “Post-Growthism”: From Smart Growth to Sustainable Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2006

Daniel M. Warner
Affiliation:
Department of Accounting (Business Legal Studies), Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington
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Abstract

As a planning concept, Smart Growth leads to a dead end. Planners and environmental professionals must help communities work toward a different planning theory predicated on the truth that, at some juncture, growth must stop. Impediments to achieving the necessary steady-state community are political, economic, legal, and ethical. Politically, most people do not want more growth, but growth happens because the pro-development community—buoyed by market forces—lobbies local government for pro-growth policies and because the pro-growth community often misrepresents the consequences of low or no growth. Economically, communities must move toward an economy of “relocalization” that promotes prosperity with growth. Legally, there are no insurmountable obstacles to the necessary (and inevitable) development of a steady-state economy that does not grow in quantity. Ethically, we must recognize that preserving a place from over-development is the right thing to do.

Type
FEATURES & REVIEWS
Copyright
© 2006 National Association of Environmental Professionals

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