Sweet dreams. How the doughnut diagram works to preempt more radical approaches to planning

Abstract

Doughnut Economics has become an important model for planning, often assumed to offer a better, more sustainable approach. This article engages with such assumptions by critically interrogating the radical potential of doughnut planning. It does this through examining the doughnut diagram, which conceptualizes core ideas of Doughnut Economics, and by relating these to discussions in planning. The analysis draws on Lacanian thought and extends the psychoanalytic approach to include visual representations in planning. It shows that the doughnut diagram forecloses ways of seeing and enjoying that more fundamentally could challenge mainstream planning. Assuming the doughnut diagram is shaping doughnut planning, this leads to the conclusion that this planning model works against more far-reaching ambitions of some of the planners rallying around it.

Keywords

doughnut planning lacan diagram enjoyment

A conceptual diagram shaping planning

When economist Kate Raworth introduces Doughnut Economics (D.E.) to a larger audience (2017), she describes how she began developing the work by drawing a picture “looking like a doughnut” (p. 10). Nowadays this doughnut is the well-known image (see Figure 1) frequently used to symbolize and explain D.E. as well as adjacent approaches drawing on D.E such as doughnut inspired planning (Breuil et al., 2025; Dijkstra, 2023; Dissaux et al., 2021; Hill-Hansen and Guldager Jensen, 2023; Municipality of Amsterdam, 2020; Regen Melbourne, 2021; Tekie et al., 2021)¹. To the wider audience this image and conceptual diagram – I will from here on refer to it as the doughnut diagram – tends to be understood as equivalent to the ‘doughnut model’. The image is often presented as the doughnut model and appearing on for example slides decoupled from Raworth’s fuller theoretical argument.

Figure 1.

The Doughnut as developed by Raworth. Credit: Kate Raworth and Christian Guthier (CC-BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).

In this, the doughnut diagram reminds us of other conceptual diagrams that similarly originated from critical discussions about mainstream economics (Purvis et al., 2019) and continued to live on as autonomous images, see Figure 2. However, what clearly sets Raworth work apart is her concerted effort to intentionally make a visual contribution that aims at “unlearning and relearning the fundamentals of economics” (Raworth, 2017: p.11) by overwriting specifically images of textbook economics “because we stand little chance of telling a new story if we stick to the old illustrations” (p.12).

Figure 2.

Schematic illustration of conceptual diagrams of sustainability. The doughnut (left) compared to other diagrams utilized in planning. In the middle the Venn-diagram with three circles representing social, environmental and economic sustainability. To the right, the nested diagram with the same circles rearranged so that economic sustainability is at the center surrounded by firstly social and secondly environmental sustainability.

The reason Raworth turns to conceptual diagrams to change peoples’ mindsets, is her understanding of images as central in how we make sense of the world (p.13) and as powerful in affecting “what we can and cannot see, what we notice and what we ignore, and so shapes all that follows” (p.15). This resembles how planning theorist Campbell (2016) – rather uniquely in the planning literature - regards conceptual diagrams as more than illustrations; he stresses them as powerful artefacts that potentially can “displace deep-rooted assumptions” and “inspire us to think in unexpectedly productive ways”:

Conceptual diagrams do change thinking (and eventually practice) when they assert a rival explanation that demonstratively makes the old view seem suddenly inadequate. They provoke us to abandon familiar ways of viewing problems and inspire us to think in unexpectedly productive ways. They need to be intuitive enough to connect ideas that were once unrelated, or compelling enough to displace deep-rooted assumptions. (2016, p. 391)

We can compare this with Raworth’s more recent recollection of the impact the doughnut diagram has had and how it has been “demonstrating the power of pictures to reshape world views, and also revealing many people’s strong desire to recognize and engage with the interconnectedness of the world’s social and ecological challenges” (Hill-Hansen and Guldager Jensen, 2023: p. 9). However, the doughnut diagram has hitherto received very little scholarly attention, corresponding to Barton & Gutiérrez-Antinopai’s more general observation, that although visual representations and imagery long have been an important part of how sustainability has been discussed and popularized, these “images, figures, and models have received relatively little attention in the literature” (2020, p. 1).

Conversely, this piece will take Raworth and Campbell seriously and critically engages with the doughnut diagram as an image of particular importance for shaping views and directing attention. The focus here will be on the doughnut diagram in relation to planning and specifically the impact this image might have on the core assumptions and attachments constituting doughnut planning. This means that this analysis does not adjust for understandings within doughnut planning or D.E. that deviate from this image.

The analysis of the image draws on Lacanian psychoanalytical thinking (Lacan, 2002) and more precisely the branch that put the work of Lacan in dialogue with Hegelian thought (cf. McGowan, 2019; Sbriglia and Žižek, 2020; Žižek, 2008). This means this discussion also contributes to the efforts of particularly the late Michael Gunder of bringing Lacanian thought to planning theory (Gunder, 2011a; Gunder and Hillier, 2009) and the recent continuation he has inspired (Bahmanteymouri et al., 2025).

This theoretical lens presumes people to be compelled by their desires and thus serves to provide a distinct perspective on meaning making and worldviews as collectively formed through libidinal attachments (Lacan, 2002). This means that we can theorize the connections Campbell and Raworth make between the shaping of world views and emotional engagement: Raworth relating people’s reaction to the doughnut diagram to “desire” and Campbell using words such as “provoking”, “inspiring”, “compelling”.

Moreover, this lens is befitting with regards to how the doughnut has become a symbol of hope around which many planning experts – more than one frustrated with the status quo –rally in our time of existential horror and denial (cf. Swyngedouw, 2022; Zupančič, 2024; Žižek, 2023). Such engagement is for example palpable in the handbook Doughnut for Urban Development in which the doughnut model is said to provide guidance towards a more just and sustainable future:

This visionary framework provides valuable guidance on how to navigate the complexities of endless growth, emphasising the importance of addressing social issues such as inequality, poverty, and access to basic needs while respecting the ecological limits of our planet. By doing so, we can pave the way for a sustainable and inclusive future. (Hill-Hansen and Guldager Jensen, 2023: p. 23)

It is also precisely in the light of how the doughnut model is embraced as a leading alternative for supposedly better and more sustainable planning (Crisp, 2023, p. 11), that I call for more scholarly debate and closer interrogations of this approach. From Raworth’s perspective it is an image “for those who are ready to rebel” (2017, p. 11) but she primarily addresses economic thinking which certainly can be found in planning (Knox, 2017; Winter, 2021) but which ought not to be conflated with planning more broadly. The aim of this discussion is therefore to probe the radicality of the doughnut diagram in the context of planning and explore how it sits in relation to a need to subvert mainstream planning ideas, and truly reimaging an alternative practice that more aptly could work to reshape current socio-spatial relations (Grange, 2023; Gunder, 2011b; Metzger, 2016; Osborne, 2019; Roy, 2021; Swyngedouw, 2014).

The discussion is outlined as follows: The next section consists of some brief remarks on previous research. This is followed by a presentation of the theoretical frame and analytical approach. The analysis is thereafter laid out and discussed over the next three sections. Based on these the overall conclusions are summed up in the closing section.

Sparse previous research

There is little previous research that studies the doughnut diagram in detail. Barton and Gutiérrez-Antinopai (2020) include it in their proposed typology of conceptual sustainability diagrams. To them the doughnut diagram is one of several examples of the category “Venn and Euler” based on the graphics as well as a fusion of social, environmental, and economic dimensions (p. 9). They briefly discuss it as a dynamic model that highly effectively promotes the operating limits and welfare of an environmental space connected to certain cultural-economic values and attributes (p. 9–10). Other than that, I have not found much discussion about the diagram per se.

The majority of analyses of Doughnut Economics (D.E.) are instead connected to discussions about conceptualizations of sustainability as well as about circular economy and degrowth (cf. Barca, 2018; Crisp, 2023; Feitelson and Stern, 2023; Friant et al., 2020; Khmara and Kronenberg, 2023, p. 11). Friant et al. include D.E. in a typology of circular economic discourses and discuss it as one of twenty discourses of “reformist circular society”, characterized by a holistic and optimistic approach that believe a reformed capitalism and sustainability can work together (2020, p. 11). Others (Barca, 2018; Khmara and Kronenberg, 2023) do instead read D.E. as an explicit rejection of the growth paradigm. Feitelson & Stern discuss D.E. as an example of a “double negative approach” of defining sustainability (2023). By this they refer to an approach and definition that stresses what is not sustainable, rather than aiming at pinning down what might be.

Crisp et al. note how D.E. is “lacking a clear or fixed spatial focus in terms of the understanding and targeting of urban problems despite being governed and pursued in urban settings” (2023, p. 14-15). However, more critical urban debates seem to be rare. One can also note that D.E., despite the broad influence in various other fields, has gained little recognition within the field of economics.

The doughnut diagram through a Lacanian lens

This discussion builds on a three-step exploration of the doughnut diagram based on Lacanian thought. The analysis more broadly rests on the assumption that engagement with the doughnut diagram requires the planner (or other subjects) to form an attachment to this image (cf. Pohl and Herbrecht, 2022). In cases where the subject becomes invested in this diagram this attachment can be seen as a form of more profound identification.

I understand the formation of such attachment as a conscious as well as unconscious process that draws on the social reality of the subject. The social reality of the subject is in turn to be understood as stitched together through various “signifying, symbolic formation[s] which assures a minimum of consistency to our being-in-the-world” (Žižek, 2008: p. 125). This is what Lacan refers to as the Symbolic, which signifies a register of meaning-making and narration. The Symbolic is activated in making sense of visual impressions, which in turn belong to the Imaginary. The Imaginary operates with the visual field to create imaginaries, that let us perceive reality as seamless and cohesive. (McGowan, 2025 pp. 48-60).² Imaginaries are likewise tied to fantasies and unconscious desires.

Žižek uses the analogue of the game Pokémon Go to illustrate how desire is at work in “fantasy frames” that “push us to look” and subsequently allow us to both enjoy and make sense of reality in particular ways:

When a player encounters a Pokémon, AR (Augmented Reality) mode uses the camera and gyroscope on the player’s mobile device to display an image of a Pokémon as though it were in the real world. (…) we look at reality and interact with it through the fantasy frame of the digital screen, and this intermediary frame supplements reality with virtual elements which sustain our desire to participate in the game, push us to look for them in a reality which, without would leave us indifferent.” (Žižek 2019: p. 114)

By pointing to the digital screen (the image) as resembling a fantasy frame, Žižek makes the distinction clear between reality and the imaginary illusions that we are invested in. On the screen there is a simplistic world, organized around the collecting of Pokémons, ready to capture the attention of the player.³

This means that what we see to an extent is showing us ourselves, or as Lacan puts it: “all sorts of things in the world behave like mirrors” (Lacan 1993: p. 49). The Pokémon example highlights the importance of “sustaining our desire”, which is understood to drive human subjects and connects to enjoyment (jouissance) “beyond the field of meaning but at the same time internal to it” (Žižek 2008: p.140). Enjoyment is a complex concept that for our purposes here can be described as what keeps one hooked and invested in one’s social reality: It is a vitalizing brew of various (dis)pleasures of striving, anticipation building, of sacrificing, and excessive acts of indulging.

To understand this sort of allure we need not to look further than at Raworth’s remarks on how “Sugary, deep-fried doughnuts hardly seem like a metaphor for humanity’s aspirations but there was something about the image that struck a chord in me and in others” (Raworth, 2017: p. 10). From the psychoanalytical perspective it makes perfect sense that something you know you should not eat struck a chord because of how you really should restrain yourself; doughnuts can be seen as enjoyable since they offer nothing but an empty sugar rush you know will cost you (cf. Freud, 2013; Lacan, 2017a; McGowan, 2004).⁴

In line with this, I approach the doughnut diagram as providing a “fantasy frame” for planning and thereby making it both meaningful and enjoyable in specific ways – more or less radical in relation to mainstream planning.

The first step of the analysis consists of a more discursive reading of the doughnut diagrams with attention to how various heterogeneous elements have been quilted together to form a totality.

The ‘quilting’ performs the totalization by means of which this free-floating of ideological elements is halted, fixed — that is to say, by means of which they become parts of the structured network of meaning. (Žižek, 2008: pp 95-96)

I view this step as a way of translating the image into a narrative that brings it into the Symbolic register and makes it accessible for the continued analysis. This step focuses on the visual composition of the various shapes and text blocks that form the diagram as well as the content of the different signifiers that are included. This builds on attention to visual hierarchies and relations through means of for example size, placement, color, and shapes. Here I also utilize Lacan’s notion of a nodal point (point de capiton) which is a signifier that pins down and unifies a given field of meaning (Lacan, 1993: pp. 268-9, Žižek 2008: p. 152). This interpretation is ultimately subjective and related to my own situated social reality of symbolic formations. However, in line with the Lacanian notion of how one’s subjectivity is part of the social, I assume this reading is able to resonate with contemporary interpretations by others active in the field of planning. This reading is explicitly described in the next section to give space for the reader to disagree.

The second step relates this interpretation of the diagram to how certain ways of viewing planning become desirable while other perspectives and foci are made less relevant. In this part of the analysis, I draw on broad discussions in planning theory to distinguish between mainstream thinking and more radical views that challenge social reality and demand a deeper rethinking of planning. From a theoretical standpoint, it is important to clarify that the alternative views brought up are not argued for as different in form; these too are frames that allow you to see and engage in some ways over others.

The third step is to consider how the totality of the doughnut invites planners to identify and form attachments to this image. This gets at what can be discussed as kernels of enjoyment (jouissance). Again, the point of this is to pinpoint how and to what degree the doughnut diagram demands one to requilt one’s attachments to planning in a more substantive manner. Important for this part of the analysis is Žižek’s distinction between imaginary and symbolic identification (2008, pp. 164-168). Imaginary identification denotes identification with an image, while the symbolic refers to identification with the gaze you perform for, or in other words the big Other. The big Other is the Lacanian term for an imagined externally demanding entity to which we are attached, like for example a particular cause, God, or parent figure (Lacan, 1988, chapter 19, see also Žižek, 2011).

The combined effort of these steps is what assists the conclusions and evaluation of the radicality of the doughnut diagram in the context of planning.

Interpreting the doughnut diagram

I’ll begin the presentation of the analysis by laying out my interpretation of how the meaning of doughnut diagram can be expressed in words. We begin with the green ring, that visually dominates the diagram. The color can be read as suggesting that the diagram is about something “environmentally friendly” or “sustainable”. The circular and uninterrupted shape of the diagram moreover signals that it encompasses an entirety; something “whole” and comprehensive. This all-seeing characteristic is further emphasized through the bright white core of the image, from which light seemingly radiates in all directions.

To make sense of this entirety, one turn to the most prominent text label reading: “the safe and just space for humanity”. I read this heading as the nodal point of the image, which quilts together the various elements into a totality of meanings that has to do with this safe and just space. This means that the rest of the diagram is interpreted through and in relation to this headline.

This nodal point is part of a more visually hefty composition at the top part of the ring, in which it is sandwiched by the additional texts “ECOLOCIGAL CEILING” and “SOCIAL FOUNDATION”, placed on the wide dark green borders of the central ring. I read this as saying that the “safe and just space for humanity” is constituted in relation to an ecological ceiling and a social foundation; the space is “safe and just” because of these two opposed boundaries, which hold up the space in between. This makes ideas of borders/boundaries/limits essential for this totality. In addition, this quilting articulates “ecological” and “social” elements as differentiated, separate and opposite.

Moreover, there are two arrows attached to “the ecological ceiling” and “the social foundation” pointing in direct opposite directions. The arrows double down on the quilting of the ecological and social element as separate and opposite each other in the overall constitution of the safe and just space. They can be read as autonomous symbols respectively signifying “overshoot” aka. The crossing of the ecological ceiling, and “shortfall” in providing the social foundation. As such they are important in reiterating the notions of the two boundaries as essential. However, the arrows also can be seen as expressing how these boundaries are interconnected in a push-and-pull motion, which implies that an act of balancing is required to save humanity from ‘sliding’ outwards as well as inwards. Such an interpretation is particularly likely if one reads the shapes as symbolic forces in a vector space. One arrow can then be seen ‘pulling’ at the ecological ceiling, while the other is ‘dragging’ the social foundation downwards. Since these arrows are positioned in the upper right corner of the diagram, they visually resemble what one would tend to associate with a positive upwards trend (environmental overshoot) respective a negative trend of degeneration (social shortfall).

Additionally, the safe and just space is articulated by the text “REGENERATIVE AND DISTRIBUTIVE ECONOMY”, placed in a more secondary and independent position the bottom of the ring. This makes the relationship between this type of economy and the boundaries vaguer. However, it seems clear that this economy is a feature of the safe space, and since the ring is a shape associated with rotation one might moreover assume the economy and this space as feeding into each other and supporting one another. This further suggests this economy as an inescapable entity completely penetrating the idea of human life, which is a view one might connect with especially neoliberal thinking.

In addition to all these elements, the diagram also contains a number of less pregnant terracotta-colored shapes surrounding the ring on both sides. Outside the ring are nine sectors labeled with various signifiers that have a scientific and technical ring to them such as “climate change”, “chemical pollution”, “nitrogen & phosphorus loading”, “biodiversity loss”, and “ocean acidification”. These can be interpreted as problem areas, and equivalent to a complete and neatly divided image of the ecological ceiling. Many observers will also be able to recognize how these sectors coincide with the so called “nine planetary boundaries” (Steffen, 2015). This suggests that the ecological ceiling is synonymous with how these boundaries are constructed, which in turn means that the ceiling refers to estimated tipping points that severely could jeopardize the habitability of the Earth. Based on this the meaning of the signifier “overshoot” is further fixated.

The inner counterpart is different in that it does not mention problems but instead twelve entities that constitute the social foundation and thus negate the “shortfall”. These do in turn bear a resembles with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations and is a somewhat disparate selection of for example “food”, “health”, “networks”, “income & work”, “peace & justice”, “housing”, and “energy”. This chain of signifiers does nonetheless articulate what we can broadly interpret as prerequisites of a modern liberal democracy organized around the idea of individual rights and paid labor.

The proposed space for humanity is thus articulated as resting on a detailed account drawing on scientific work as well as an institutionalized international consensus regarding human development and needs. However, a few of these inner segments such as “energy” and “water” can be seen as challenging the taken-for-granted separation of the social and ecological. Contrary, it could also be understood as further confirming and explaining the idea of a pull-and-push; Water is for example required for the social foundation but to stay within the ecological ceiling “freshwater withdrawal” cannot be allowed beyond a certain point. This seems to confirm the interpretation of a suggested tension between social and ecological considerations.

Visually these twenty-one secondary elements are too many to simultaneously grasp in a more precise manner. Instead, my interpretation is that they visually primarily articulate that the safe and just space is possible to precisely pin down and managed by considering a number of well-defined and known factors. Both the inner and the outer ring are filled out (no blank spaces are left) and neatly divided into separate elements. This suggests that what counts have been counted, and that what we get is an exhaustive record. Or, in other words, the safe and just space is equivalent to a system consisting of a finite number of subsystems.

This again quilts the totality of the doughnut diagram as something complete, which brings us back to the initial point of this image portraying a world that can be grasped in a comprehensive and systematic way from a very distant viewpoint. The doughnut let us take for granted that our attention needs to be on “saving humanity” and that this is achievable by a double movement of safeguarding against environmental overshoot above a certain limit while ensuring a social foundation up to a certain level. These two efforts are to be understood as separate but interconnected. As such, the doughnut diagram simultaneously provides a blueprint of a system in balance, a description of the current predicaments, an answer to what needs to be tackled, as well as a device for monitoring potential progress.

Viewing planning through the doughnut diagram

The interpretation of the doughnut diagram finds a number of assumptions articulated as taken-for-granted. In the following I will discuss these in relation to planning to interrogate their radicality in the context of planning theory and practice.

The safe & just space for humanity

I begin with the core assumption that our attention needs to be on creating and safeguarding “the safe and just space for humanity”. This nodal point includes several signifiers that are familiar and easy to attach to if you are a concerned planner, such as the reference to justice and safety, aside from the creation of spaces. The linage of social engagement in planning seems to align well with a human-centered approach over others that perhaps tend to put technology and financial interests above all. It is also easy to attach to these signifiers because of how well they align with ideas of planning as operating in the service of people and the public (nota bene not the same as a hard look at the outcomes of planning). This latter imaginary is even upheld in highly technical planning domains dominated by utilitarian thinking and welfare economics such as transport planning (Kębłowski and Bassens, 2018) as well as largely underpinning mainstream planning (cf. Allmendinger, 2017: pp.37-80). It is therefore not surprising if this nodal point is well received in planning. However, from a more critical perspective this is nevertheless a rather damaging nodal point of alternative planning paradigms.

Firstly, there is damage in elevating humanity to the center of attention in that it deflects various posthuman and more-than-human perspectives (cf. Houston et al., 2018; Metzger, 2023) along works on metaphysics that decenter the human subject (cf. Barad, 2007; Boelens, 2021; Harman, 2018; Pohl and Helbrecht, 2022). Seen from the perspectives of most non-human life, a call to save humanity comes across as rather absurd. That the ongoing mass extinction can be read as acknowledged in the doughnut diagram as “biodiversity loss” (one of the nine aspects of the ecological ceiling) does not change how the quilting of the doughnut constitutes this as important for humanity. This doubles down on instrumentalizing other beings, which unarguably enables and feeds into the current situation of deteriorating living conditions for many beings including many humans.

Secondly, it is damaging to refer to “humanity” as a collective, given how no such collective exists: contrary some humans thrive in excess while other are dying in circumstances that are nowhere near just. To discuss these problems in terms of one humanity is to travel in myths (cf. Laclau, 1990: p. 61) that shield oneself from the discomforts of political engagement with the different fractions that humans alongside non-humans are caught in. Seeing how a particular normative idea of living together is portrayed as universally ideal and on par with the logics of bio-physical laws, the doughnut also seems to echo Fukuyama (1992) in viewing Western liberal democracy as a supreme end state of historical progress. Taken together this also detract from the importance of planning discussions related to colonialism, patriarchy, racism, and capitalism as well as acknowledgement of deep differences (cf. Miraftab, 2009; Porter, 2006; Watson, 2006; Yiftachel, 2020). Paired with the impulse of human supremacy and the myth of humanity, it is difficult to read this as challenging mainstream planning, or the well-documented injustices created through, for example, planned urbanization.

The separation and tension between the ecological and social

Another “truth” to interrogate in relation to planning is the separation between a “social” and an “ecological” sphere. This imaginary has long been problematized in scholarly discussions from various perspectives, including the idea of nature-culture as a dichotomy and as ontologically meaningful (Lacan, 2017b: p 31; Latour, 2004; Pohl, 2020). To cling to this separation makes it more difficult and less urgent to go upstream (cf. Machado de Oliveira, 2021: p. 81) and consider “ecological overshoot” and “social shortfall” as related symptoms of similar origin. This helps planning to continue to obsess over, for example, CO₂ and car traffic as if these were root-problems instead of symptoms of social mechanisms and current structures that simultaneously damage places and require the exploitation of some people alongside an overwhelming number of other beings. In this way the doughnut makes it harder for planning to broadly bring onboard the lessons of particularly political ecology and indigenous planning.

These assumptions also reiterate the existing imaginaries of “the ecological” or “nature” as something primarily spatially located outside the human sphere, which in planning often is understood as equivalent to the urban. The doughnut diagram visually places the ecological outside and differentiated from the “space” for humanity. As such it becomes possible to conceive of urban planning as something that might have effects on “the ecological” but still as something utterly different than the habitats of other beings.

In addition to this foundational constitution of the two spheres and their separation, the doughnut goes further by suggesting that there is tension and potential opposition between these two. This plays into a polarization of consideration of people versus the environment, which already is mobilized in the current political landscape. It has for example been weaponized in planning where the necessity of opening new mines has been argued for in the name of a ‘green transition’ in opposition with consideration of inhabitants living in these places (Rodon et al., 2025). Or the other way round, continued planning for high mobility lifestyles in the name of concern of working-class people, as is the case in for example Sweden (Proposition, 2024/25:30). That is not to say that no tensions exist (cf. Dörre et al., 2024) but that these broad categories construct over-simplified conflicts lines that tend to conceal more than they reveal.

The precise relationship between the ecological ceiling and the social foundation of the doughnut must not necessarily be interpreted as opposed. However, this interpretation can be seen in practice as exemplified by Dillman et al. (2021) who in a discussion on mobility view the ecological ceiling as equivalent to “overconsumption” (which needs to be reduced to stay within planetary boundaries) and the social foundation as “underconsumption” (increased consumption is required to achieve the social goals), which implies a push-and-pull between what is viewed as social and ecological concerns (2021, p. 4, Figure 1).

The proposed social problem

Related to this separation is also what we might refer to as the articulation of the social problem of “the social foundation”. This foundation is focused on providing for poor and marginalized people that “not yet” have the rights and necessities of people in the safe and just space. My point is that this supports an existing tendency of viewing people in marginalized positions as the social problem that needs fixing. The doughnut does not provide a corresponding “social” problem that target other social groups that endanger “the safe and just space”; such mechanisms are instead articulated as environmental problems. This leaves the latter groups and especially the richest percentage largely out of the picture and conceals (the Real of) how affluence depends on someone being poor (cf. Desmond, 2023).

This corresponds to mainstream planning where social concerns typically are raised as relevant in relation to more marginalized neighborhoods and much more seldom viewed as a question of curbing the lifestyles planned for in affluent neighborhoods (cf. Callmer, 2019, p. 231; Fainstein, 2014). The point is not that there is something wrong with improving difficult living conditions but that without tackling what is going on at the other end of the financial spectrum and the mechanisms in play, it is hard to do more than treat symptoms. One could even argue that the treating of symptoms works to make the capitalist system somewhat more acceptable and therefore supports it, in comparison with how Bahmanteymouri views “modern planning as the ‘corrector of imbalances’ within capitalism” (2021, p. 231) by drawing on Harvey (1985).

Believes in boundaries

This brings us to the belief in boundaries, which is constitutive of this totality. The diagram presupposes that universal thresholds exist and can be identified that separate a good or acceptable condition from a dangerous or unacceptable.

These presumptions can naturally be problematized because of how they assume the possibility of a hegemonic consensus and objective definition of what is tolerable and good. It is difficult to hold this as remotely possible or justifiable without depending on highly scientific views of knowledge in a positivistic lane (cf. May and Perry, 2022: pp. 8-12). This rehashes the previous point that it is presumptuous to not open the question of what should constitute the foundation of society if you seek radical change.

In relation to planning, which is a practice that similarly emphases boundaries, this might clash with a tradition of viewing boundaries as negotiable entities. According to this, one does not tend to view boundaries as absolute but as open to discussions in more communicative and situational approaches to planning or as representing different interests/variables to consider in an operation of optimalization (Biggar, 2021; Brömmelstroet and Bertolini, 2011; Forester, 1987).

However, there is also a tradition of more strict application of boundaries in planning that comes closer to the assumptions related to the “ecological ceiling” of the doughnut. The latter typically reproduces the assumption that, for example, the exposure of unhealthy substances can be assimilated and thus ignored as long as they stay under a certain threshold (cf. With the Streeter-Phelps equation of water pollution science). Liboiron points to how such constructions of a distinction between for example “waste” and “pollution” paves the way for practices of contamination analogous to the land-grabbing impulses of colonialism (Liboiron, 2021). This view is deeply incorporated and institutionalized in planning, for example regulated limits for noise and pollution, and in practices through instruments such as environmental impact assessments. Such practices typically resonate with understandings of the world as broadly knowable, possible to sort into relatively autonomous subsystems, measurable, and controllable.

Taken together, boundaries are in the realm of planning utterly familiar although the doughnut strengthens more scientific-led and absolute approaches to the understandings of boundaries. This could be seen as enabling a firmer stance that is less open to negotiation and compromise. However, from a broader point of view it would be much more radical to insist on a greater acknowledgment of non-knowledge as an intrinsic companion of all planning (Law, 2004; Sandercock, 1998) and to question the current embrace of boundaries as a form of safeguarding. It is also worth stressing that a battle regarding the precise regulation of something (and/or to what degree) is a lost battle with regards to whether this something is acceptable as such.

Giving in or giving up?

Compared to the broad and detailed scope of considerations that planning normally tends to include and regulate, a sole focus on the particular boundaries of the doughnut might seem less demanding and more laissez-faire. Additionally, lots of concerns might come across as very local or minor in this imaginary planetary perspective.

However, an alternative is to read the doughnut as articulating that we no longer have the luxury of broader concerns beyond keeping the planet inhabitable and trying to provide a version of basic needs. Such harsher readings could in the field of planning possibly work to begin to shake planners (cf. Zupančič’s discussion on Hegel’s notion of being shaken and scared to one’s core, as a forced reckoning, 2022, pp. 99-101) to question taken-for-granted ambitions of creating places that provide much more than basic shelter and similar functions. This might introduce a state of emergency mode, which potentially could change planning rather drastically in ambiguous ways. One could surely argue that planning needs a shake-up, but we also know how the banner of immediate emergencies and crises is used to legitimize power overhauls and totalitarian impulses (Klein, 2007; Zupančič, 2024). One can moreover question what it even means to care from a planetary perspective? Furthermore, it is surely not self-evident that it is time to already admit such a large defeat and give up (Malm, 2021; Pohl et al., 2023). In fact, giving up can be seen as a move that allows you to go on like before.

Regardless, seeing the articulation of the social foundation echoing the fantasy of liberal democracy it seems likely that the doughnut in a more profound way holds on to the possibility of future lifestyles that resemble affluent lives in the Global North. It thus upholds the fantasy that one with some adjustments can continue to have the cake and eat it too, without feeling guilty and with that we turn to discuss desire.

To attach and identify with the doughnut diagram in planning

From the previous discussion, we begin to see that the articulations of the doughnut diagram largely are compliant with mainstream planning and make more critical strands of planning theory less relevant to engage with. To further explore this, we will look at what it might mean to identify and enjoy these articulations as a planner.

To begin with imaginary identification, the core assumptions of the doughnut can be said to provide the planner with an illusion of reality that is knowable and neatly ordered. It replaces the messy realities with a systematic image and symbolic narrative that does acknowledge that there are problems but illuminates them as feasible to solve and papers over deep structural problems with a seemingly neutral technocratic approach. The planner does not need to doubt his capacity to know what needs to be done and can concentrate on managing this reality primarily through safeguarding certain boundaries and balancing different forces. Attachment to the doughnut invites the planner to identify with the idea of a neutral apolitical role that operates on knowledge and reason (cf. the Weberian ideal-type civil servant). It is thus far from a role welcoming of doubts and of “cultivating torments” (Metzger, 2016) since the subjectivity, desires and emotions of the planner are located outside of how the role is constituted. This means that it allows one to continue to uphold a role which prescribes an internal separation between one’s expertise and one’s emotions.

This can be understood as desirable because it largely allows planning professionals to continue to enjoy mainstream planning according to already well-rehearsed patterns of attachment. It can also let planners continue to both recognize and feel good about their current expertise, which likewise can be understood as important to one’s subjectivity and sense of meaning. Moreover, this prescriptive repression of one’s feelings can help shield the despair and anxiety that one’s knowledge about injustices and the rapid deterioration of living conditions (at least unconsciously) likely induces.

Additionally, the emphasis on the policing boundaries can be understood to come with various possibilities of enjoyment. Broadly speaking, limitations are often working in favor of enjoyments (cf. objet a) and in this case invites various sacrificial and obsessive forms invested in “prohibition”. (cf. Pohl and Swyngedouw, 2023 p. 4). In a culture that otherwise largely has moved from repression to an embrace of an imperative to enjoy, indulge, and splurge (McGowan, 2016) the bureaucracy can be seen as an outpost that has continued to uphold “a belief in its almightiness” (Žižek, 2008, p. 73).

This adds to how the doughnut moreover support planners to identify with the grand mission of saving humanity, which is an imaginary position of a hero doing what is Right and also of self-sacrificing in the name of a greater unquestioned good. This ties to the symbolic identification with the gaze you perform for, which in the doughnut diagram is a detached and all-encompassing god view of the whole planet and “humanity” from a far (cf. Haraway 1988, p. 581). It is thus to identify with a supercharged version of a neutral and reasonable public goodness, untainted by the debates of how this is problematic (Bhan, 2016, p. 27; Roy, 1999) and reminding us about what Sandercock refers to as “the heroic model of planning” (1998, p. 27).

In Lacanian terms this can be read as a symbolic identification with the Big Other. Important here is the Lacanian insight that we often enjoy through our fantasies of what others want including the Big Other. Following this, the doughnut can be seen as an imagined roadmap of the desire of the Big Other; of what is sustainable and what is needed in order to save humankind.

Taken together, the doughnut diagram offers a comfortable continuation of identification with mainstream planning. It shields one from internal as well as external questioning that threatens to undermine the constitution of these established attachments, and moreover does this by posing as a novel and alternative approach to planning that enables you to enjoy the role of a sustainability hero on the mission of rescuing humanity. As such it is a planning model that can let some of us continue to “enjoy climate change” (Pohl and Swyngedouw, 2023) alongside other catastrophes while “frantically doing nothing” (Žižek, 2023, p 163).

The likelihood that planning in this lane will fail in contribution to a sustainable world, does not necessarily subtract from making this desirable. Enjoyment is as previously discussed more about obstacles and sustaining tension than about finding ease:

The usual definition of fantasy (‘an imagined scenario representing the realization of desire’) is therefore somewhat misleading, or at least ambiguous: in the fantasy-scene the desire is not fulfilled, ‘satisfied’, but constituted (given its objects, and so on) — through fantasy, we learn ‘how to desire’. (Žižek, 2008 p. 132)

Conclusions: an appeal to the status quo of planning

The overall conclusion based on this analysis is that the doughnut diagram does not substantially challenge the status quo of planning. It is not a conceptual diagram that “assert a rival explanation that demonstratively makes the old view seem suddenly inadequate”, to come back to Campbell’s description of what a conceptual diagram can contribute with (2016, p. 391). Instead, it contests the more critical frontier of planning theory and calls for more fundamental change to what it means to plan (Grange, 2023; Osborne, 2019; Roy, 2021). Furthermore, within the spectrum of the mainstream it supports a movement towards more “scientific” approaches to planning that focus on indicators and modeling; basically, a revival of old-school Procedural Planning Theory (cf. Allmendinger, 2017, p. 53) powered up by big data, increased computing capacities, and AI (cf. Iapaolo and Lynch, 2025; Saeed et al., 2022). As such the analysis confirms the previous studies from other fields that more broadly have categorized Doughnut Economics as moderate and reformistic although it clearly articulates more than the negation of sustainability stressed by Feitelson and Stern (2023). Nevertheless, the contribution to economics is assumingly more thought-provoking than the inputs to the field of planning and especially planning theory.

Among the findings leading to this overall conclusion are the anthropocentric worldview, the illusion of the existence of one humanity, the separation of the social from the environmental, the emphasis on boundaries, and the neutral science-led approach to human society. The findings also suggest that the doughnut could offer comfort and sustain a psychic attachment to mainstream planning, by assisting in repressing a deeper emotional acknowledgment of the available knowledge and subsequent feelings of overpowering distress. The doughnut can be read as papering over a messy, scary, and ambiguous reality with a fantasy of reality as manageable and possible to deal with in an instrumental piecemeal manner in the interest of “all”.

This is not to say that the doughnut diagram is without merits; it does not challenge planning, but it can be used within the current logic of mainstream planning. Compared to earlier conceptualizations of sustainability, the diagram does notably emphasize justice and downgrade economic considerations to a more secondary concern. It is likewise of importance to remember that this analysis of the image does not aspire to evaluate Raworth’s contribution at large: In her work there are certainly more nuances than the image holds and, in some instances, even contrary positions.⁵ The doughnut diagram could perhaps to some extent also work to emotionally shake planning, through the sad suggestion that we no longer have the luxury of broader concerns beyond keeping the planet inhabitable and providing some version of basic needs.

Additionally, one might argue that any conceptual diagram by necessity needs to be reductive and simplistic. This is precisely what makes conceptual diagrams highly valuable for community building and mobilizing within the context of planning.

It would thus be easy to reject the doughnut diagram as a benign and well-intended continuation of the type of planning we already are flooded with. However, as the nature of a conceptual diagram is to be reductive it becomes all the more important to consider what narratives thereby impose. These can when successful – as in the case of the doughnut – shape our thinking and engagement, and perhaps even more so since images might not be something we are as used to critically unpack as for example a written argument. Or, in more theoretical terms, because the Imaginary provides an illusion of mastery.

Moreover, seeing how the doughnut diagram is picked up and utilized as a supposedly better and more just model for planning by people who in many cases really do want to work for more substantial changes, it becomes much more problematic. Especially seeing how the diagram in practice often tends to be viewed as equivalent to doughnut planning. As such, it could work to domesticate the potential radicality of such oppositions, which could have wider consequences and prolongate planning in the current lane of mediated exploitation. As a main takeaway, I would therefore advise against an unreflective embrace of the doughnut as the alternative planning model; it might work to dim down your potentially more radical ambitions.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Claus Hedegaard Sørensen at The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI) for welcoming this more critical contribution into the project “The role and character of public transport within planetary and social boundaries: thresholds, scenarios, and positive visions”. Additional thanks for the engaged and encouraging response received at the seminar in the Department of Urban and regional studies, KTH. I also want to extend a warm thanks to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable readings and commentaries.

ORCID iD

Karin Winter

Funding

This research was funded by K2 The Swedish Knowledge Centre for Shared Mobility. Grant number: 2022005.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Data Availability Statement

The research is based on the literature included in the reference list.*

Notes

Author biography

Karin Winter is a theoretically driven planning scholar with over twenty years of experience as a planning practitioner. She holds a PhD in planning from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and has done a postdoc at Lund University.

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