Territorial Cohesion and the European Model of Society

Abstract

The book Territorial Cohesion and the European Model of Society is a companion volume to Andreas Faludi' s 2002 book European Spatial Planning. The books have been published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy aiming at familiarising American planners with the European approach and thinking about the transferability of European concepts and experiences to the North American context. The main idea is that concepts and procedures of transnational planning in Europe might apply to analogous transboundary planning, across state lines, within the US. The 2002 book was a comprehensive account of the process of preparing, negotiating and adopting the milestone document of spatial planning in the European Union, namely the European Spatial Development Perspective. In the 2007 volume, the authors explore how the foundational ideas about Europe underpin the concept of territorial cohesion and policy objectives such as polycentric, balanced and sustainable development. As Armando Carbonell of the Lincoln Institute highlights in the foreword, the contrast between an American and an European model is best expressed in how different strategies combine equity with efficiency. The European model, with its emphasis on cohesion, favours development in-place whilst the American one favours selective migration to locations of greater opportunity. The volume is based on papers presented in Vienna in 2005 and contains contributions by 1 1 scholars and planners. In Chapter 1 Andreas Faludi elucidates how the 'European model of society' emerged as a normative concept in the process of European integration. He stresses that the distinctive quality of the European model relies on the legitimacy of state interventions which attempt to combine the pursuit of economic growth with concerns about social welfare and development. Without neglecting the institutional and political diversity within European nation-states or the similarities between the political traditions in the two continents, Faludi shows that the idea of territorial integrity is deeply rooted in the attachment of Europeans to their soil and highlights the concept of territorial identities, as most evident in the French tradition. His review of the process of European integration assigns a central role to Jacques Delors' political vision and action which succeeded in establishing a single