Towards the Stationary City?

Following in the wake of Jean Haëntjens’ article on land use in a time of ecological transition, Julien Damon throws a welcome spotlight on a work which, by advocating a “stationary city”, runs counter to the dominant analyses in the field of urban planning. Its authors — Philippe Bihouix, Sophie Jeantet and Clémence de Selva — take the view that in the current ecological context, the era of “megapoliticization” is over and we need to rethink the urban model with an eye now to maintenance rather than construction. The aim should be to rehabilitate, to create the new within the old, to better distribute, and to encourage “demobility”, so as to limit needless travel; in short, we need to optimize the developments that started after the Covid and energy crises and to look towards, if not degrowth, then at least a stabilization of urban development. Julien Damon expounds the argument of this serious and copiously documented work which makes the case for the stationary city.