Lessons from Radical Environmentalism, Describing Possible Alternatives for the Resilient Planning in the Peripheral Regions

Climate changes, sixths mass extinction, use of the natural environment and extreme land transformation have been bringing the question of long, sustainable future. Theoretical division of cities, towns and rural areas have been shaping our perception and types of actions that are answering upcoming challenges. Division and separate perceptions make it difficult to build a holistic answer (Brenner & Schmid, 2011) for the problem of reaching ecological limits on the planetary level (Steffen et al., 2015). While areas being placed in economic cores, megacities and great metropolitan areas, the world innovation hubs, have been constantly producing technological solutions, the solutions itself can be hardly applied for the rest of the world, not having enough economic performance to face the adaptation needs. Differentiating the common planning strategies through’ weak’ and ‘strong sustainability’, can help to take taking a critical statement and localize mistakes for sustainable development policies (Pelenc, 2015). Global peripheries, consisting mostly of the patchworks of different productive landscapes and disperse, low-dense, urban settlements, in the current paradigm are mocking failed development strategies, do not benefit society and escalating the use of the natural environment. Radical environmentalism, with values equivalent to ‘strong sustainability’ position, arguing that deep resilience can be only built through ensuring the perpetual self-organization of systems (Holling, 2001). Translating it into spatial planning, radical environmentalism has been putting high emphasis on local society, surrounding its ecosystem, and unique interaction between both, building strategies beyond economic development. Thus, answering the call for strategies ‘beyond growth’ (Ikers, 2014; Leick & Land, 2018) this paper will firstly explore the characteristics and conditions of the peripheries. Secondly, through lenses of radical environmentalism will localize alternative approaches and their translation into spatial planning, with special attention to bioregionalism (Carr, 2005), degrowth (D’Alisa, Demaria & Kalis, 2015) and indigenous development (Broadfield, 2018), supported by localized case studies. This descriptive research, by giving examples of projects and initiatives under those, will not only pinpoint mistakes of ‘weak sustainability approaches’ but also critically mark the challenges of alternatives.