PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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growth and land actors along by-pass roads in Norway. The results of her research are
the most relevant to the Budapest case, since the main point of contention in Budapest is
also suburban sprawl. Falleth summarizes her findings as follows (Falleth 1999:357):
It has been argued that by-pass roads lead to suburban growth and that the construction
of such roads will prompt the planning of industrial and other commercial
developments, on the part of the local municipal government. This case study of five
by-pass roads shows that a significant, but limited suburban growth takes place along
these roads.
So although the investigated towns were neither undergoing rapid transition nor
were they of a size comparable to Budapest, the respective by-passes still induced
“significant” suburban growth. This conclusion is consistent with the results from the
recent OECD study “Managing Urban Growth” (2000b), which also found that one of the
major factors facilitating sprawl is the development of high-speed access roads around
urban centers. Also note that in the case of Norway, this growth occurred despite the
existence of explicit national policies targeted to curb urban sprawl. 15
As Falleth explains
(p. 358):
An increasing number of political restrictions have been laid down through national
guidelines on suburban growth along by-pass roads. … These guidelines are more
restrictive to the construction of new exit roads from the by-pass roads and to
suburban growth along the roads. The Ministry of Environment has singled out
densification within the urban area as a national policy for urban growth since the
1980s to avoid further urban sprawl.
Many European countries now have similar policies, confirming that anti-sprawl
sentiments are the new mainstream of EU urban policy (for an excellent up-to-date
overview of policies, see Baar 2002).
15 Falleth’s study also points to the key role local and regional governments have in either supporting or
discouraging private investment adjacent to the infrastructures. As we will see, this is a key issue in the
case of Budapest as well.