Smart district development in small towns

By Aglaée Degros Aglaée Degros, head of the Institute of Urbanism at TU Graz, describes how small and medium-sized towns are able to deal with the challenges of sustainable urban development. Scant sustainable forms of mobility, vacant shops in the town centres and stagnation in the implementation of the energy revolution particularly affect small and medium-sized towns and European urban regions. The Institute of Urbanism at TU Graz is giving its attention to this topic and together with TU Wien and the Salzburg Institute for Regional Development and Housing (SIR), is offering continuing education in sustainable urban development for practitioners in urban planning offices. Increasing vacant shops in the town centres, difficulties in managing sustainable mobility or in maintaining socio-cultural infrastructure as well as absent energy-development planning affect in particular small and medium-sized towns. Spotlight on small and medium-sized towns. The vast majority of Austrian towns are small or medium-sized towns and urban areas. Nevertheless, these areas have garnered much less attention from town planning and urban research than the cities.