PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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controversial, issue, since many ecological modernization scholars would still support
calls for new and improved governance structures in order to help overcome
environmental challenges.
4.8 Concluding Remarks
The key aim of this long and wide-ranging chapter was to present a description of
both the currently dominant environmental discourse of ecological modernization and of
complementing and contradicting discourses shaping potential transport policy
alternatives. Of course, some distinctions between the different discursive frameworks
sometimes appear somewhat stereotypical, especially when common sense tells us that
most of the relevant stakeholders influencing transport policy in Europe are in fact
employing a mixture of the above distinguished approaches. However, I would argue
that the existence of such multiple policy discourses is precisely the reason for the
enormous success that the discursive framework of ecological modernization has had in
shaping urban, regional, environmental and transport policy in the Europe Union:
ecological modernization offers a win-win perspective that is best poised to incorporate
wide-ranging environmental critiques into an overall, positive future vision of sustainable
development. In his concluding paragraph, Maarten Hajer (1995:294) mused that
the environmental dilemma of modern society will not go away. … It would be a great
improvement if ecological politics would shed its prevailing techno-corporatist format
and create open structures to determine what sort of nature and society we really want.
The evidence on EU transport infrastructure investment rationales presented in the
following chapters betrays Hajer’s hope: Growth and expansion-oriented discourses and
techno-corporatist influences still reign strong in this particular arena.