My essay in the pamphlet Five Critical Essays on Growth, edited by Austin Williams of the Future Cities Project, has just been published (read it on Spy) —
Macdonald, N. (2026) ‘Growth needs entrepreneurs’, in Williams, A. (ed.) Five Critical Essays on Growth. London: TRG Publishing, pp. 33–38. Available at: https://futurecities.org.uk/publications-2/
The other contributors are Phil Mullan (@Phil_Mullan) Charlie Winstanley (@cfwinstanley) Mark Iddon (@Mark_Iddon) and Shiv Malik (@shivmalik). Foreword by Austin Williams (@Future_Cities) [ed.] and afterword by Patrik Schumacher (@patrik_schu). From the overview:
This book is a critical commentary on Growth: the way it is defined, perceived, desired, hated and critiqued. Whether it’s the search for a magic money tree, an equivalence of taxation to productivity, a condemnation of neo-liberalism, or an outright rejection of the concept of growth itself; these five essays (with an introduction by Austin Williams and a no-holds-barred conclusion by Patrik Schumacher) argue that growth is the essence of a healthy, efficient, productive society.
In the UK, urbanism has been a visible expression of human progress. From the Victorian cities, Georgian terraces, or Modernist reconstruction; from the industrial expansion to post-war reconstruction, construction and its architecture have represented prosperity, opportunity, and aspiration. Yet since the 1970s, the Limits to Growth agenda – amplified by environmental limits has entrenched an attitude of Less, not More. Amongst other things, this book takes to task the creeping acceptance of the contemporary degrowth agenda.
I would welcome critical feedback.
More generally, I am planning a series of research and events and activities in this to try to inform an entrepreneurship agenda for the new Andrew Burnham government, which this essay kicks off.