A Reflection on the Sustainability of Urbanization in Europe since 2000 Evidence from the ESPON SUPER project

As a push towards sustainability, the European Union has set a goal of achieving ‘no net land take by 2050’ (NNLT) – essentially calling for a halt to urban development. Thanks to relatively detailed land cover data for the 2000–2018 period, we can evaluate the progress towards this goal as well as question whether this is a suitable metric for sustainable land use. In purely quantitative terms, NNLT is far from being achieved. Focussing on urbanization alone is however insufficient. As the vast literature on sprawl has demonstrated, it is not only the amount of land being developed which matters for sustainability, but also its form. To evaluate this, NUTS-3 regions in Europe were classified in terms of their urban (sub)structure and the changes to this (sub)structure in the 2000–2018 period. The results reveal that the most common structure is ‘polycentric’ and that most countries possess both compact and more diffuse structures. Worryingly, some countries are becoming increasingly diffuse, particularly Poland. We argue that both aspects should be taken together when considering the sustainability of urban development, even the though the latter is not on the European policy agenda.