
Wie kann Suffizienzpolitik gelingen? Planung und Umsetzung suffizienzorientierter Stadtentwicklung durch kommunale Verwaltungen
Sufficiency policies are increasingly seen as indispensable to achieving sustainability goals. Sufficiency is a strategy to reduce consumption and production levels by changing social practices. Municipalities are central to the implementation of sufficiency policies, as they can directly promote sufficiency through infrastructural and institutional redesign. However, as sufficiency policy relies on the redistribution of existing resources, its implementation is considered politically divisive. The analysis of 19 qualitative interviews from twelve municipalities in Germany and Switzerland that have implemented sufficiency-oriented projects shows how municipal administrations have contributed to their successful implementation. The administrations organise the implementation along the lines of sufficiency-oriented ideas, creatively gain access to the necessary material resources, and take on a mediating and strongly shaping role in the process design. Decoupling municipal financing from municipal growth would be crucial to support municipalities in developing and implementing more far-reaching and extensive sufficiency policies. As our examples show, once established many sufficiency-oriented projects are widely recognised.
Keywords: degrowth; municipal administration; policy making; social practices; sufficiency; sustainable urban development
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: December 29, 2023
GAIA is a peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to inter- and transdisciplinary research on and for sustainability transformations.
Environmental problems cannot be solved by one academic discipline. The complex natures of these problems require cooperation across disciplinary boundaries. Since 1991, GAIA has offered a well-balanced and practice-oriented forum for transdisciplinary research. GAIA offers first-hand information on state of the art environmental research and on current solutions to environmental problems. Well-known editors, advisors, and authors work to ensure the high quality of the contributions found in GAIA and a unique transdisciplinary dialogue – in a comprehensible style.
GAIA is an ISI-journal, listed in the Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Science Citation Index and in Current Contents/Social and Behavioral Sciences.
All contributions undergo a double-blind peer review.- Editorial Board
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