How can sufficiency policy succeed? Planning and implementation of sufficiency-oriented urban development by municipal administrations

Abstract

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.