Disturbance is present in many systems, and a key hypothesized mechanism of competitive coexistence is that it allows different life-history strategies to coexist, enabling types better at exploiting empty patches it creates to coexist with better-competitor types. Prior approaches demonstrating this provided limited insight due to considering only patch-scale dynamics. Here we analyze a partial-differential-equation model in which larger-scale competitive dynamics emerge from within-patch population dynamics of species competing for patches subject to disturbance. This model provides a list of several within-patch demographic trade-offs enabling large-scale coexistence that prior models could not. Most do not scale up to patch-level trade-offs previously emphasized, as recruitment preemption of one type by another is not necessary to their action. Furthermore, many are trade-offs ecologists presume to be purely equalizing, involving only components of intrinsic growth. Our work provides a shift in focus in disturbance-generated coexistence theory, to within-patch demographic strategy differences that enable it.