Transforming the City for Sustainable Futures? Contestation and Alternatives in Amsterdam

Abstract

This thesis explores the potentials and limits of the city as a locus for transformative social change promoting just and sustainable futures away from extractive capitalism and neoliberal urbanism. Policymakers, activists and researchers increasingly turn to the city as a site for sustainable practice, political potential and alternative economic thinking. Yet, it remains insufficiently clear how alternative models and ideas are put into practice and how the actions subsequently taken by state and non-state actors are collective and transformative. To inform collective, transformative practice, this thesis develops a theoretical account of transformative social change against the background of the tight interconnections of the urban with capitalism which shape the contingent political-economic conditions for change. It posits transformative social change as consisting of two moments: one of difference and contestation and the other of alternatives and diverse economies. In these moments, post-capitalist subjectivities and decommodified urban spaces arise which challenge capitalism in the city and the ways it is premised on growth, divides society into social classes and relies on unpaid care work and nature. The thesis explores the potentials and limits of transformative social change in the city empirically through the case of Amsterdam and its emerging Doughnut Economy. The latter is based on an alternative economic model incorporating social and ecological thinking. The Municipality of Amsterdam has embraced this model in relation to its latest circular economy strategy, while a range of urban activists have adopted it in their efforts to transform the urban economy from below. Drawing on qualitative methods and a dynamic research approach that is both critical and generative, the project examines Amsterdam’s emerging Doughnut Economy, to distil the potential for alternative practices arising in, and despite, dominant structures while remaining aware of the ways in which these structures condition and limit this potential. The study shows how social actors working with and beyond the state engage in contestation and promote alternative practices that begin to reconfigure the unsustainable relations of the urban economy with nature and reposit the city as a space for social reproduction rather than (immaterial) production. Yet, the potential for material rather than merely discursive change remains limited as long as the governing of urban space is profit-dependent and sustainability efforts are simultaneously instrumentalised for international competitiveness and green growth. The thesis thus argues that transformative social change requires paying attention to alternative value creation and class relations in the city as well political-economic relations extending well beyond the geographic boundaries of the city. By shedding light on the dynamics present in one local setting, the thesis paves the way for further disentangling the myriad connections of (un)sustainable local practices with geographies elsewhere – something which is needed to enable solidarities extending far beyond the local.