PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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well as ideological ones. Serious geopolitical interests are likely to shape the process,
depending on the different power relationships among the various actors involved. Given
the vast geographical scope and sheer magnitude of the issue, it is also much less clear
who “the public” is in this case. Concrete locational conflicts and ownership struggles
over particular stretches of land are unlikely to influence the decision-making process in
Brussels much, although they might certainly come to the fore at the individual project
level.
1.2 Transport Infrastructure Investments Illustrate Key Dilemmas of Planning
A human right, a human pleasure, an economic resource and a servant of economic
activity: transport is many things to all people.
European Commission, Directorate General for Transport1994:1
The decision to choose transport infrastructure decision-making as the key focus
of this investigation was not a random one, but followed a strong conviction on my part
that struggles over transport infrastructure investment decisions best illustrate the central
dilemma of public policy and planning in modern capitalist democracies. That is:
planners and policy makers, and ”state agents” more generally are always caught between
two central and often contradictory objectives. On one hand, they administer
infrastructure systems and services for the “public good,” thereby providing the so-called
“legitimation functions” of the modern welfare state (Offe and Keane 1984). On the
other hand, they facilitate and support the activities of private sector agents in order to
advance capitalist development objectives. In the Anglophone planning literature, this
central contradiction was perhaps best summarized by Foglesong who is worth quoting at
length here: