A more productive urban bias when it comes to pastoralists?

In a very fine article on degrowth strategies in urban areas, “Strategic planning for degrowth: What, who, how,” Federico Salvini of the University of Amsterdam concludes:

The concepts of synergy and regionalization are already familiar in strategic planning theory. They stress that, to trigger strategic processes, it is essential for planners to grasp the existing landscape of prefigurative practices, directly engage with them, connect them through frames of meaningful interaction, and define a common understanding of the territory in which those practices coexist. In this paper, I argued that strategic spatial planning needs to go back to these two foundational processes to be able to address the extreme urgency of today’s social and ecological challenges (i.e., ecological breakdown and its related socio-political implications). Yet, it needs to do so by focusing on those practices that see reduction as imperative. In cities, these practices are increasingly common. Examples include housing cooperatives, ecological social housing, squats, community agriculture, food sovereignty, collective voluntary simplicity, and networks of care, education, and health.

(Accessed online at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14730952241258693?__s=5c7iz8sjrdi0asw7ei91&utm_source=drip&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Your+Syllabus+This+Week)

Now, I don’t want to make too much of those degrowth “how-to-reduce” practices I’ve bolded in the above.

But aren’t many pastoralists and pastoralists areas still doing the equivalent–and long before degrowth moved to where it needs to be in the global policy agenda?