In response to today's political, ecological, social and economic crises, a broadly anti-capitalist 'degrowth' movement has emerged. This critical body of literature and activism sees the growth imperatives of capitalism as being fundamentally incompatible with our finite and increasingly degraded planet (Weiss and Cattaneo 2017; Kallis et al. 2018; Alexander and Gleeson 2019). Degrowth advocates are virtually united in their call for the developed--or, rather over-developed--regions of the world to initiate a process of planned and equitable contraction of their energy and resource demands, with the goal of moving toward a stable, broadly egalitarian, steady state (or zero-growth) economy that operates within the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet (D'Alisa et al. 2015).

Although the degrowth movement has no singular vision of the 'good society' (Kothari et al. 2019) or singular theory of transition, there seems to be broad support for the notion that a degrowth society, if it is to overcome the many social, economic and political obstacles in the way of its emergence, will have to be driven into existence from the grassroots up, with individuals, households and communities coming together to 'prefigure' a new post-capitalist society within the shell of the old (see D'Alisa et al. 2015). According to this broad theory of change (Buch-Hansen 2018), such prefigurative action is projected to filter upwards over time to change social, economic and political structures in recognition of the systemic nature of the problems (Alexander 2013; Trainer 2010).

The privileging of grassroots or community-led action is mainly due to the widely shared perspective that the ability or willingness of politicians or business to lead a degrowth transition is scarce-to-non-existent (Alexander and Gleeson 2019; Rickters and Siemoneit 2019). Nevertheless, despite the coherency of these doubts, similar doubts could be levelled against hope for a degrowth transition rising up from any kind of a socio-cultural groundswell (Frankel 2018; Sanne 2002). Indeed, this article argues that such paralysis in degrowth transition theory stems from the growth imperatives of the dominant politico-economic order of global capitalism --particularly relating to land, whereby ordinary people expected to lead the transition are essentially locked into market participation to buy or rent housing and keep a roof over their head.

While the biophysical aspects of the degrowth perspective are important, coherent and largely compelling--indeed, we accept the validity of the case (Turner 2019; Kallis 2017)--the movement has given insufficient attention to land and housing costs, which are significant barriers hindering true political and economic agency and any grassroots driven degrowth transition. As we will argue, the struggle for access to land and housing almost always locks people into sustained, but not sustainable, market participation.

While land has been analysed by political economists for centuries (see below)--including astute analyses within this journal (see, e.g. Collins, 2018; Munro 2012; Anderson 2011; Morris 2010; Foley and Anderson 2006; Jordan and Stilwell 2004)--none have presented an extended analysis of land in the context of the 'limits to growth' predicament (Turner 2019). Nor have they examined how access to land in market...