PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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is mention of the need to “alleviate the problems of peripheral areas by linking them to
the core of the Community as well as linking these areas together through improved
infrastructure.” However, the role of the TENs is entirely defined as an accessibility
issue, without reference to sustainability questions:
TransEuropean Transport Networks (TETNs) are also instrumental in terms of
improving access to cities, generating employment and allowing exchanges between
cities and regions. More generally the TENs have the potential to open up Community
territory, generating new opportunities for cities connected to the network. … Cities
themselves form the nodal point which conncets modal networks and are therefore
essential elements of the TETNs.
Of course, urban sustainability discussions are amply provided in other recent
Commission documents, and, indirectly, even in other parts of this document, with
transport elements usually concentrating on the need to ease urban traffic congestion,
promote public transport and non-motorized means of travel, improve intermodality and
better integrate land use planning and transport.
5.4.2 Sustainable Urban Development in the EU: A Framework for Action
Published on the heels of the 1997 Agenda, this Framework for Action
(Commission of the European Communities 1998a) aimed at “a better coordinated and
targeted community action for urban problems” and set out a Community rationale for an
examination of EU policies from an urban perspective. Of its four strategic
interdependent policy aims, one actually explicitly targets sustainability (“Protecting and
improving the urban environment: towards local and global sustainability”). The
framework was discussed at a large “Urban Forum” which the Commission organized in
Vienna in November 1998. However, while pointing to the urban dimensions of several