Post-growth society and the city. The role of micro-enterprise agency in urban socio-economical transformations

In this thesis, a synthesis of theoretical frameworks deriving from social-economical economics' as presented by growth-critiques scholars was used to design a meta-theoretical framework of urban analysis. The city is considered as an urban system, a spacial-temporal unit, which is scalarly embedded and thus, shaped by socioeconomic and political processes on various levels. These dynamics resulting from time-space interactions between agencies, structures, nad institutions, interactively shape the urban development trajectories. One of this possible trajectories may potentially lead to the development of an alternative urban socio-economic environment that corresponds with the post-growth societal paradigm that the growth-critique socio-ecological literature theorize. The thesis investigates this possibility through historically informed empirical research on the emergence of the "Post-Growth City" by focusing on the factors and agents assisting or preventing urban systems of advanced capitalistic economies to move from their post-industrial to their post-growth development phase. To do so, initially, a research framework was designed, drawing the link between the various theoretical contributions of the growth-critique schools of thoughts, and the city as relevant unit of analysis and a possible agent capable of triggering wider societal changes (Paper 1). Consequently, the dynamics and particularities of the urban development trajectories of Athens and Barcelona, selected as urban laboratories for an empirical investigation of such potential transformation, are revealed (Paper 2). Finally, a micro-empirical investigation takes place, focusing in one type of possible agent (the micro-enterprise) that can facilitate or prevent such urban systemic post-growth socio-ecological transformations (Paper 3).