Alex Baumann
Dr. Alex Baumann is a Degrowth Academic at Western Sydney University. His work highlights the significant role of land ownership in shaping collective reliance on economic growth. This structural analysis is gaining recognition in Degrowth scholarship, with recent publications in The Journal of Australian Political Economyand the De Gruyter Handbook of Degrowth, alongside several discussion pieces. To address this structural impediment to degrowth, Alex advocates for revitalising housing and food land commons, in modern urban contexts. To this end, he is involved in practical policy development through the “Neighbourhood That Works” project, which seeks to reframe public housing initiatives to support commons-based alternatives.
Watch Alex and his Sustainable Futures students deliver a short presentation on this analysis here: https://youtu.be/zuaWj58eIvI
Recent articles by Alex Baumann
23 January 2025
Reimagining public housing: the transformative potential of Centrelink’s Voluntary Work Program
The current housing crisis is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of transforming homes into investment vehicles. And it has been decades in the building. The only thing unique about the present crisis is that it is now destabilising both the major political parties – in that sense the housing crisis is now a political crisis. The impending federal election campaign will no doubt reveal a raft of proposed political fixes that may or may not exacerbate the crisis.