IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijurrs/v49y2025i6p1399-1416.html

TOWARDS A DEGROWTH CRITIQUE OF AEROMOBILITIES: An Urban Political Ecology Perspective on the Airport Expansion Resistance in Barcelona

Author

Listed:
  • Ersilia Verlinghieri
  • Rubén Martínez Moreno
  • Mauro Castro
  • Alejandra López Martín

Abstract

Aeromobilities—socio‐technical systems that lock in dependence on fossil fuel‐based mobilities—contribute substantially to climate change and uneven geographies. They represent paradigmatic capitalism‐driven forms of metabolism, permeated by logics of efficiency and growth. While existing literature has examined resistance to airport expansion, it has overlooked opposition to the metabolic dimensions of aeromobility. Using an urban political ecology (UPE) lens, this paper explores resistance to aeromobility through the case of the Stay Grounded movement against the expansion of Barcelona airport. We analyse airport resistance as a critique of capitalism‐driven metabolization of nature, emphasizing the interplay of material flows, territorial subjectivities and degrowth‐inspired imaginaries in opposing aeromobilities and constructing alternative visions. Using semi‐structured interviews and a review of activist materials, we illustrate how the Stay Grounded movement forged discoursive and strategic alliances that reterritorialized opposition to airport expansion by integrating critiques of carbon emissions with broader struggles over livelihoods and ecological preservation. We highlight how degrowth principles, combined with territorial and metabolic analyses, enabled resistance to transcend localized NIMBYism and articulate transformative visions of mobility and urban‐nature relations. This article contributes to UPE scholarship by providing a critical example of infrastructure politics in the context of climate emergencies and degrowth debates.

Suggested Citation

  • Ersilia Verlinghieri & Rubén Martínez Moreno & Mauro Castro & Alejandra López Martín, 2025. "TOWARDS A DEGROWTH CRITIQUE OF AEROMOBILITIES: An Urban Political Ecology Perspective on the Airport Expansion Resistance in Barcelona," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(6), pages 1399-1416, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:49:y:2025:i:6:p:1399-1416
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.13356
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13356
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1468-2427.13356?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Behrsin, Ingrid & Benner, Chris, 2017. "Contested spaces and subjectivities of transit: Political ecology of a bus rapid transit development in Oakland, California," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 95-103.
    2. Georgina Blakeley, 2010. "Governing Ourselves: Citizen Participation and Governance in Barcelona and Manchester," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(1), pages 130-145, March.
    3. Michael Ekers & Scott Prudham, 2017. "The Metabolism of Socioecological Fixes: Capital Switching, Spatial Fixes, and the Production of Nature," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 107(6), pages 1370-1388, November.
    4. repec:sae:envval:v:22:y:2013:i:2:p:191-215 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Ryan Holifield & Nick Schuelke, 2015. "The Place and Time of the Political in Urban Political Ecology: Contested Imaginations of a River's Future," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 105(2), pages 294-303, March.
    6. Mustafa Dikeç & Erik Swyngedouw, 2017. "Theorizing the Politicizing City," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 1-18, January.
    7. Claudio Cattaneo & Joan Marull & Enric Tello, 2018. "Landscape Agroecology. The Dysfunctionalities of Industrial Agriculture and the Loss of the Circular Bioeconomy in the Barcelona Region, 1956–2009," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-22, December.
    8. Creighton Connolly, 2019. "Urban Political Ecology Beyond Methodological Cityism," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 63-75, January.
    9. Anke Schwarz & Monika Streule, 2016. "A Transposition of Territory: Decolonized Perspectives in Current Urban Research," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(5), pages 1000-1016, September.
    10. Schwanen, Tim, 2019. "Transport geography, climate change and space: opportunity for new thinking," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    11. Martin Sarnow & Norma Tiedemann, 2023. "Interrupting the neoliberal masculine state machinery? Strategic selectivities and municipalist practice in Barcelona and Zagreb," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(11), pages 2231-2250, August.
    12. Stephen Graham, 2015. "Life support: The political ecology of urban air," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(2-3), pages 192-215, June.
    13. Greig Charnock & Hug March & Ramon Ribera-Fumaz, 2021. "From smart to rebel city? Worlding, provincialising and the Barcelona Model," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(3), pages 581-600, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Antonella Pietta & Marco Tononi, 2021. "Re-Naturing the City: Linking Urban Political Ecology and Cultural Ecosystem Services," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-19, February.
    2. Roger Keil, 2020. "An urban political ecology for a world of cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(11), pages 2357-2370, August.
    3. Monika Streule & Ozan Karaman & Lindsay Sawyer & Christian Schmid, 2020. "Popular Urbanization: Conceptualizing Urbanization Processes Beyond Informality," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 652-672, July.
    4. Zeke Marshall & Paul E. Brockway, 2020. "A Net Energy Analysis of the Global Agriculture, Aquaculture, Fishing and Forestry System," Biophysical Economics and Resource Quality, Springer, vol. 5(2), pages 1-27, June.
    5. Mohamed Saleh & Ward Rauws, 2022. "The urban political never sleeps: A framework for tracing emergent counter-responses to depoliticisation," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 40(6), pages 1272-1289, September.
    6. Heather M Watkins, 2017. "Beyond sweat equity: Community organising beyond the Third Way," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(9), pages 2139-2154, July.
    7. James Christopher Mizes, 2023. "Refusing relocation: Urban street vendors and the problem of the neoliberal device," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(7), pages 1762-1779, October.
    8. Viviana Asara, 2018. "Untangling the radical imaginaries of the Indignados' movement: Commons, autonomy and ecologism," SRE-Disc sre-disc-2018_04, Institute for Multilevel Governance and Development, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    9. Mark Purcell, 2022. "Theorising democratic space with and beyond Henri Lefebvre," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(15), pages 3041-3059, November.
    10. Beniamino Peruzzi Castellani, 2023. "The European Ideal of an Inclusive City: Interculturalism and “Good Social Practices” in Barcelona," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(3), pages 150-161.
    11. Marull, Joan & Pino, Joan & Melero, Yolanda & Tello, Enric, 2023. "Using thermodynamics to understand the links between energy, information, structure and biodiversity in a human-transformed landscape," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 476(C).
    12. Côme Salvaire, 2019. "Recovering Sociology from the Trash Heap: Of Waste Politics and the Spatialization of Local Representation in Lagos," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 354-376, March.
    13. Colin Lorne, 2024. "Repoliticising national policy mobilities: Resisting the Americanization of universal healthcare," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(2), pages 231-249, March.
    14. Prathiwi Widyatmi Putri, 2024. "The political: A view from Jakarta’s kampungs," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 56(3), pages 979-987, May.
    15. Fernando Fernandez-Monge & Sarah Barns & Rainer Kattel & Francesca Bria, 2024. "Reclaiming data for improved city governance: Barcelona’s New Data Deal," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(7), pages 1291-1307, May.
    16. Menon, Siddharth, 2025. "Sand, plantation urbanism and the extended political ecology of infrastructures in India," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 128542, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Danny Marks & John Connell, 2024. "Unequal and unjust: The political ecology of Bangkok’s increasing urban heat island," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(15), pages 2887-2907, November.
    18. Di Wu & Juan Carlos Martín, 2022. "Research on Passengers’ Preference for High-Speed Railways (HSRs) and High-Speed Trains (HSTs)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-20, January.
    19. Nicole T Cook & Sophie-May Kerr, 2024. "Assembling high-rise: The uneven agencies of air in suburban densification in the Anthropocene," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(7), pages 1308-1326, May.
    20. Nele Lohrum & Morten Graversgaard & Chris Kjeldsen, 2021. "Historical Transition of a Farming System towards Industrialization: A Danish Agricultural Case Study Comparing Sustainability in the 1840s and 2019," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(22), pages 1-15, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:49:y:2025:i:6:p:1399-1416. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0309-1317 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.