PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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higher levels of education and income.
This is an ongoing challenge for
environmentalists and social activists both in Europe and elsewhere.
Other political economy arguments are more framed in terms of a European coreperiphery
divide, building on the implications of the different spatial metaphors related to
European space. 45
A common interpretation of the famous Blue Banana, for example,
was that agglomerations outside the banana were “doomed to failure” in the competitive
European hierarchy. While this is of course an overstatement, there is now strong
empirical evidence confirming that European integration has been of much greater
benefit to central regions than to peripheral regions in the South and the North (Cheshire
1990). Goldsmith (1993:686) further reports that “falling transport costs have a
significant effect on who performs well or badly.” So whatever the precise outline of the
central European geopolitical powerhouse, there has long been a consensus that EU’s
more peripheral regions are likely to be the losers. Spatially-oriented political economy
concerns have also received much additional support through empirical evidence
presented in the new national and regional development studies questioning road
building’s positive effect on growth (also see the discussion under 2.5.4). In the end,
these researchers then argue, the TENs are likely to increase regional disparity in Europe,
rather than foster overall integration and cohesion (as modernizationists like to believe).
Turning attention from academic scholars to local activists, one finds in the
radical anti-capitalist group ASEED a most radical defender of social justice values.
ASEED, a group of young leftist activists who have mounted an extensive network of
45 Such spatial political economy approaches typically strongly rely on the concept of cohesion. Cohesion
is one of the key “storylines” of EU decision-making, and it is analyzed in much more detail in chapter 5.