Cities have attracted the attention of many researchers and practitioners as promising arenas for sustainability transformations – ranging from incremental and progressive changes to radical and transformative ones. A particularly inspiring strand of research and practice has evolved around the notion of ‘municipalism’. Yet, to date, there is limited knowledge how growth dependencies are enacted and entrenched at the municipal scale and, conversely, how they can be dislodged and turned into growth autonomy.

Municipalities represent a valuable entry point for researching post-growth transformations, but focusing on them requires careful consideration to avoid common pitfalls.

• Complexity of cities: Treating cities merely as bounded areas fails to capture their inherent complexity. Cities are deeply interconnected with broader socio-spatial relations. By using the term ‘municipality,’ we emphasize our choice to initiate research within specific territories, while acknowledging the necessity of considering the broader context. We use ‘municipal level’ to refer to the organizational, functional, discursive, administrative, and legal aspects related to the ‘local state’ and ‘city-regional’ economic interactions, treating it as an entry point rather than a fixed category.

• The ‘Local Trap’: Attributing specific advantages to municipalities compared to other levels of governance falls into what Purcell (2007) calls the “local trap.” Instead of assuming that municipalities are inherently better for post-growth purposes, we investigate how they can serve as a “strategic entry point” (Russell 2019) for pursuing post-growth transformations.

• Beyond Formal Structures: Focusing solely on formal institutional structures of municipalities misses the complexity of everyday practices within and beyond these institutions. We adopt a broad perspective on what we term Municipal Transformative Communities (MTC), defined as (loose) alliances among municipal politics, municipal administration, eco-social organizations, and community groups working toward pro-social and ecological change at the municipal scale.

While growth can have different meanings, we are specifically concerned with economic growth – the increase of the total (formal) market value of all final goods and services produced in a given territory over a specific period of time (commonly measured by GDP). In this context, we define post-growth as a normative stance that advocates a departure from the (likewise normative) pursuit of economic growth as a key objective for society as a whole.

We developed the concepts of growth dependency and growth autonomy to operationalize a post-growth perspective in our research. These ideas help us to explore how municipalities can move beyond growth as both an objective and an institutionalized principle.

Growth Dependency: A condition where a society, organization, or entity is compelled by internal and/or external forces to prioritize:

1. Immediate monetary costs and return on investment
2. Private economic interests and private appropriation of surplus value
3. Market mechanisms and competitiveness

to ensure its everyday functioning, subsistence, and self-conception.

Growth Autonomy: A condition in which a society, organization, or entity can determine its own growth trajectory independently of external pressures or dependencies. This implies freedom from the need for continuous economic growth driven by factors such as global markets, institutional expectations, or cultural norms.