Planning Around Ecological Constraints: A Degrowth Curriculum Proposal for MIT
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bonnamy-bonnamy-mcp-dusp-2026-thesis.pdf
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Author(s)
Bonnamy, Gabriel
Advisor(s)
Susskind, Lawrence
Date Issued
May 2026
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
Planning education is preparing practitioners for a world that no longer exists. The sustainability frameworks that organize most planning curricula – from green growth and smart cities to net-zero development and sustainable development goals – share a common assumption: that the current polycrisis can be resolved within a system organized around the imperative of perpetual economic growth. The empirical record assembled across decades of research in ecological economics says otherwise. Global absolute decoupling of GDP from material throughput has not occurred. The energy transition is more accurately described as energy addition and the planetary trajectory we are on has no precedent in the history of human civilization. Growth is not only ecologically impossible. Beyond a certain material threshold, it is also socially undesirable, actively eroding the relational goods on which human wellbeing depends. Planning education, and alongside it, the education of policymakers, engineers, business leaders, and designers, has almost entirely avoided incorporating the body of knowledge which challenges the endless pursuit of economic expansion: degrowth. This thesis argues that the response to this gap in how we train future sustainability professionals requires a reorientation of planning education around the degrowth frameworks and vocabulary that match the ecological constraints of today and tomorrow. It proposes a course titled Rethinking Sustainability Planning, designed for MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, as a contribution to that reorientation. In Chapter 1, I establish the biophysical foundation of this argument: despite the promise of green growth, the modern economy which supports current standards of living remains a material process that cannot decouple from fossil fuels (which are in structural decline) or from ecological impacts. Chapter 2 then traces the “missing dialogue” between planning and degrowth, showing how the institutional framework within which planners operate has made economic growth a structural prerequisite for planning action and why degrowth has remained almost entirely outside the professional curriculum. In Chapter 3, I present empirical evidence of the resulting knowledge gap through an original survey of MIT planning students, making the case that the vocabulary required to evaluate sustainability claims, including basic concepts like decoupling, rebound effects, and wellbeing, is absent from planning education. Chapter 4 maps the global landscape of degrowth education across various countries and institutions, drawing inspiration from what existing courses do well. To my knowledge, no existing degrowth course has ever been designed specifically for planners. Finally, Chapter 5 closes by presenting a response to this diagnosis: the blueprint for a course titled Rethinking Sustainability Planning along with a new planning decision-making framework for solving planning problems in a context of global ecological constraints.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning
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