PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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1.1 In Search of a Sustainable Transport Policy for the New Europe
What changes must now occur, in our way of looking at things, in our notions! Even
the elementary concepts of time and space have begun to vacillate. Space is killed by
the railways. I feel as if the mountains and forests of all countries were advancing on
Paris. Even now, I can smell the German linden trees, the North Sea's breakers are
rolling against my door.
Heinrich Heine's “Tremendous Foreboding” in response to the opening of the Paris-
Rouen rail link in 1854 (cited in Harvey 1996)
The history of modern societies can be read as a history of their acceleration.
J. Steiner (cited in Spiekermann and Wegener 1994)
The advent of the European Union and the breakup of the Soviet Union in the
1990s have brought profound new challenges to all levels of planning and policy making
across the European continent. The European Union is now under enormous pressure to
uphold its self-proclaimed goals of “harmonious, balanced development, sustainable
growth, economic and social cohesion, improved quality of life and solidarity between
member states” 1 while at the same time preparing ten Central and Eastern European
(CEE) transition countries for accession.
One of the key issues within this challenge of creating an ever-expanding
“Sustainable Europe” is the upgrading, expansion and optimization of transport
infrastructures. John Ross (1998:xii) found transport to be “an unusually fertile, though
often overlooked, subject in the firmament of European studies.” The stakes for investing
in the “right” kinds of transport and land use systems are especially high in the transition
countries, where systemic changes are the most dramatic, motorization rates the highest,
infrastructure needs the greatest, and where EU accession funds and other international
funding are most likely to make a critical difference in sustainability outcomes.