Today is 24 May 2025.
The world population is approximately 8.2 billion, and growing. Within the next century, it is expected to reach a maximum and then decline.
This blog, Smaller, was conceived in 2025 to curate media about the causes and consequences of our post-growth future.
We have not known a world without growth. Apart from a few exceptional years the story of the humanity since the industrial revolution has been one of growth. Arguably, capitalism itself depends on it. Businesses, municipalities, community organizations, and institutions are all designed around an assumption of growth. Recent global trends challenge this assumption. In the developed world, rural depopulation, declining involvement in community organizations, and decreasing academic enrollment are all trends which will stress infrastructure and institutions which are designed for growth.
Many - but not all - of these phenomena are related to the demographic transition, as we become a society with low childhood mortality, low fertility, and longer lifespans.
However, this is not a journal about natalism, or antinatalism, though articles on these topics may be highlighted under the broader topic of demography. (Post-growth phenomena can be observed in regions with extreme emigration, entirely independent of the birthrate.) This is primarily a journal about how institutions which are designed for infinite growth adapt to a new post-growth reality -- low growth, no growth, or even shrinkage year-over-year. It is more interested in adaption to change rather than the attempts to reverse them.
The effects of these post-growth trends will appear unevenly across society and the world. While much of society will continue to experience growth for many years, some sectors are already post-growth. Today many regions are experiencing deindustrialization, emigration, population decline, and infrastructure collapse. Other segments of society (for instance, religious institutions in the developed West) are experiencing a decline in their number of adherents. They may illustrate the future effects of post-growth on larger society as a whole.
Example topics will include the following:
Demographic crises in industrial nations as a result of declining fertility, and their social/economic/geopolitical consequences.
Smaller family sizes and the impact on the size/quality of individuals' social networks.
Rural depopulation due to increasing urbanization.
Small urban depopulation of due to deindustrialization.
Concentration of population and economic activity in large urban centers.
Shrinking religious institutions due to secularization.
Shrinking community organizations due to atomization.
Smaller social circles, due to the above.
Smaller university classes and university campus closures due to a smaller cohort of young adults.
Proposed alternative economic models and policy proposals for a post-growth world.
Once-dominant corporations experiencing declining market share due to changes in technology, the economy, and consumer behavior.
The list is not exhaustive, and this journal cannot be exhaustive, as it is (for now) the work of a single editor. Articles will be selected based on their relevance. Selection of a particular article does not imply endorsement. There will be a bias toward topics which are of personal interest to the editor.