St. Pölten is the small capital of a large federal state by Austrian standards. Lower Austria is the largest Austrian federal state in terms of area, with its residential population only surpassed by Vienna. It takes just a quarter of an hour to reach rural areas from St. Pölten. Peripheral regions such as the Waldviertel can be reached within half an hour by car. The periphery includes places with a slowly dwindling residential population, advancing aging, and long distances to social, medical, and economic infrastructure - villages without the possibility to purchase everyday goods, lacking an inn as a place for social interaction and self-organization. In Europe at the beginning of the 21st century, there are numerous peripheral regions where the negative spiral of infrastructure thinning and job migration can be observed.