Territorial Cohesion and the European Model of Society

In this book, based on papers first presented in Vienna in the summer of 2005, the authors take up territorial cohesion as a kind of successor concept to the European Spatial Development Perspective discussed in the Lincoln Institute’s previous volume, European Spatial Planning (2002), also edited by Andreas Faludi. The question posed here is whether there are lessons for U.S. planners to be found in the European experience, and, more tentatively, whether it is possible to reflect back to Europe any useful insights based on an American view of the world.

The title indicates that fundamental ideas about Europe, with its distinct “model of society,” lie behind the concept of territorial cohesion, which can be understood as a goal of spatial equity that tends to favor development-in-place over selective migration to locations of greater opportunity. This approach contrasts with an American social model that views the equity principle behind territorial cohesion to be diametrically opposed to the efficiency principle based on free mobility of labor. The European model is a strategy based on “need” rather than “potential,” as one conference participant noted. A willingness to make this trade-off between potentially higher productivity and a particularly rooted conception of place is indicative of the difference between the two models of society.

Apart from the obvious legal, political, social, and cultural differences between the United States and the European Union, it is often noted that the EU contains a population 50 percent larger than that of the United States within less than half the land area, yielding a population density of almost 300 per square mile versus only about 85 per square mile in the United States. Yet the more urbanized parts of the United States are beginning to approach European densities. The 14-state Northeast megaregion, for example, with approximately 52 million people in 188,380 square miles, weighs in at more than 275 people per square mile. This trend suggests that at least physical planning around infrastructure, especially high-speed rail, could be informed by European precedents.

The hope is that this second publication in the series will provide new inspiration based on further understanding of the relationship of territorial cohesion to the European model of society and its possible applications across the Atlantic Ocean.

About the Editor

Andreas Faludi is a professor at the OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies at the Delft University of Technology.