Village and town centers are increasingly recognized as key locations for creating compact, high-quality living environments with short distances, social interaction, and local economic activity. Regional programs of urban development emphasize their importance as multifunctional hubs that can reduce daily transportation needs, support local services, and counteract urban sprawl. However, it remains largely unclear to what extent these centers can contribute to reducing space and material consumption. This paper examines the role of sufficiency within the framework of the “Starke Zentren” (Strong Centers) initiative, a regional support program in Styria (Austria). This program aims to assist municipal decision-makers through advisory services and strategic guidance for strengthening village and town centers. Sufficiency refers to the reduction of absolute resource consumption through demand-oriented spatial development and complements strategies of consistency and efficiency. We use sufficiency as an analytical lens to identify resource-reducing aspects of that program. We investigate which forms of sufficiency, understood as resource-saving strategies, are reflected in the measures of the “Starke Zentren” initiative through a qualitative content analysis. We systematically categorize existing measures by type (strategy, tactic, pilot) and assign them to spatial fields of action. This approach reveals the aspects of sufficiency implicitly addressed and where substantial gaps remain. The findings indicate that many measures exhibit only moderate transformation potential (as derived from program descriptions), while strongly sufficiency-oriented interventions remain rare. Tensions between economic revitalization and resource conservation constrain their impact. The analysis also highlights the adjustments and complementary measures that are necessary to strengthen the sufficiency orientation of existing center-development strategies.
Steiner et al. (Thu,) studied this question.