Designing for Post-Growth

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We live in an era of technological abundance (though unevenly distributed), and yet somehow we've managed to construct a system that manufactures scarcity at every single turn!

At the same time the climate emergency (and by extention, the polycrisis) demands new paradigms. It isn't just about warm weather but the predictable outcome of an economic system that treats infinite growth as the absolute goal of everything, alas on a finite planet. The response from most businesses has been a kind of collective denial sprinkled with a little bit of "green growth" and "sustainability initiatives".

Design has been enlisted in perpetuating this contradiction. We have been creating products with planned obsolescence, crafting marketing language that encourages overconsumption, and optimizing interfaces for maximum engagement rather than genuine human well-being. In 2025, it is clear we need another framing of design that seeks alternative narratives to the dominant growth paradigm.

Post Growth is a planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being (Jason Hickel).

Design for a post growth economy then (from hereon Post Growth Design, or PGD for short), recognizes that we cannot design our way out of climate collapse while remaining within the growth paradigm. Instead, we need to radically reframe design, so we can build for durability, repairability, sufficiency, and human thriving that doesn't depend on ever-increasing material throughput.

Here’s an attempted definition:

Post-growth design is an approach that rejects unlimited economic growth as a goal, instead using design to serve human thriving, ecological regeneration, and social equity within planetary boundaries. It prioritizes sufficiency over excess, centers caring labor and meaningful human understanding, and applies systems thinking to create regenerative rather than extractive business models.

Post-growth design treats design throught the lens of prefigurative politics. PGD aims to actively build alternatives to growth-dependent structures that fail to address the climate emergency. It resists reducing design to algorithmic processes while at the same time reimagining success beyond traditional metrics.

Using business as activism

Many people tend to have a specific view of activism. Signs, chants, street demonstrations, and being late at work. However, activism encompasses any deliberate action that reveals alternatives to the status quo. When we create spaces, or relationships or even businesses that operate by values different from those dominating our norms, we engage in a form of prefigurative politics that shows how another world is not just imaginable but already emerging.

An entrepreneur who builds a business that prioritizes sustenance over profit or growth, a community establishing a mutual aid network, or a teacher introducing democratic decision-making in their classroom. All of those are activists demonstrating viable alternatives. This embodied activism carries a profound message of hope. In a way, it is proving that change isn't just something to demand from power but something we can prefigure through our daily choices and creations, together.

Starting a post-growth business is therefore an act of activism. We're creating spaces where the values of an economy that is balanced with the living world can be lived and experienced. This is proving, through practice, that businesses can thrive while remaining within planetary boundaries.

Reimagining transitions

Designers have always been tasked with making the impossible seem not just possible but inevitable. We've done this for consumer products, digital services, and brands. When we understand the complex connectivity between the environment, the economy, technology, and human needs, we can design businesses that address these challenges holistically rather than treating them as separate domains.

I'm thinking of developing these ideas further into an online course for designers, or tech people in general, who want to build post-growth businesses. Not just theoretically, but practically with concrete tools, methods, and case studies drawn from real successes (and learned failures).

If you're interested in exploring how might we create businesses that prioritize social and ecological impact over growth, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know!

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