Giorgos Xanthopoulos

Urban Transformation and Sustainability

Another Rural: A post-growth imaginary for rural Greece

Contemporary Greece is faced with many challenges in addressing climate change, particularly due to intense political neglect, corruption and a focus on short-term economic gain over long-term consequences. This has created a problematic lock-in to growth-reliance, disallowing the imagining of alternative ways of living.

Another Rural explores the implementation of the overwhelming post-growth agenda, contextualised in the basin of the river Spercheios and operationalised through a bioregional approach to territorial planning. Traditional methods of visioning and representation are rejected in favour of experimentation with a fictional story highlighted by speculative design interventions. A future post-growth society is described from the perspective of a rural dweller as they meander around the imagined bioregion. Accompanying this academic-fictional tale are physical artefacts in the form of ceramic vessels that explore the necessary values of such a future and form part of an ongoing investigation of new communication and design tools for Urbanism.

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