PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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It is this constant process of rationalization and operationalization which is so
crucially important in understanding the reasons for the obvious and ongoing
discrepancies between the omnipresent environmental rhetoric of contemporary European
societies (which is not limited to governments but also includes all other sectors
including business and industry) and the ongoing environmentally unsustainable
developments observable at the local level (e.g. suburbanization, sprawl, rising transport
emissions, persistence of traffic accidents etc.). It is here, at the programmatic level,
where key sustainability agendas are formulated, revised, adapted, coopted, corrupted, or
possibly simply ignored. In the case of transport policy, “operationalizing” sustainability
usually means developing criteria that either steer transport investment choices towards
certain geographic locations (i.e. compact cities, non-ecologically-sensitive sites) or into
certain “more sustainable” (i.e. less polluting, less energy-intensive, less fossil fuelintensive
etc) transport systems. The latter can mean both, choosing between different
modal alternatives, or choosing a more efficient model or system within the same mode.
Clearly, the “contextual discourse” dilemma is a problem with several, sometimes
interlocking dimensions.
In the remainder of this concluding chapter I will a) once again briefly
recapitulate the main contents and conclusions of the different parts of the study, b)
present a variety of cross-cutting, summarizing conclusions, c) offer some concrete
suggestions for improved transport-sector decision-making in Europe, and d) provide a
short outlook for further research.