Examining Sustainable Spatial Development in Luxembourg

As founding member of several European and international institutions (EU, OECD, NATO, UN), host to several institutions of the European Union (Parliament Secretariat, Court of Justice, the European Investment Bank), and ranked 16th among global financial centers (City of London 2010), Luxembourg’s smallness is enigmatic, but also offers a unique opportunity to study global processes operating within a small frame. This paper presents progress achieved in, and collaborative to, the SUSTAINLUX research project, funded by the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Unlike its neighbouring nations, Luxembourg seems only just entering a post-flexible era (if at all). The financial ruptures since 2008 have had relatively little impact, and as such, Luxembourg grapples with spatial structural changes associated with its post-industrial and prospering tertiary economy. Its comparably young sustainable development policy is primarily challenged by recent demographic changes, and its geographical specificity. Of its 503,000 residents, roughly 200,000 are landed immigrants. On each working day, the nation’s population increases circa 50% as workers from neighbouring nations enter the country and commute to work. Each day, the City of Luxembourg’s population doubles in size – and its nodal position at the crossroads that lead to Cologne, Paris, and Brussels, is continually strengthening in importance.

Concurrent pressures on the real estate market rates pose a real barrier to settlement within or near the capital city (Becker and Hesse 2010). There are thus strong impacts at the local level with high pressure on the provision of housing and transportation infrastructure, which result in conflicting trajectories in terms of sustainable land-use. The fields of housing policy and mobility are thus promising case studies towards a more thorough analysis of the significance, policy relevance, barriers, and shortcomings of sustainable spatial development strategies.

The research aims at critically examining the approach of sustainable development, in the context of Luxembourg’s urban and regional transformations and corresponding governance structures (Carr, Hesse and Schulz 2010). While city planners are confronted with finding ways to manage growth, the normative of sustainable development permeates all levels of planning. The first part of this paper will map the literature and discourse on sustainable development in Luxembourg, and summarize the role and limitations of this normative discourse in its social spatial transformation.

The second part of this paper will introduce the research agenda of Prof. Krueger, who will pursue research collaborative to SUSTAINLUX, adding a comparative dimension to the study. He will describe his aims to: 1) understand the institutional milieu of sustainability governance in Luxembourg and how it compares internationally; 2) develop an understanding of how actors work and how these practices reproduce certain outcomes; 3) understand how actors’ perceptions affect the form and function of sustainability governance; and 4) assemble the data from aims 1-3 to develop a triangulated analysis of institutional change that is both actor-centric and sensitive to the contextual constraints of the system. This comparative approach will be of interest to social scientists who study how actors understand and shape their policy milieus in different political and geographical contexts, in relation to sustainability.

References

Becker, T. and Hesse. 2010. “Internationalisierung und Steuer metropolitaner Wohnungsmärkte – Das Beispiel Luxemburg” Information zur Raumentwicklung.“ 5: 403-415.

Carr, C., Hesse, M., and Schulz, C. 2010. „Sustainable Spatial Development in Luxembourg (SUSTAINLUX)” Funded by FNR (CO9/SR/01), Working Paper 1, Laboratoire de Géographie et Aménagement du Territoire

City of London (2010) “Global Financial Centres 7.“ City of London.

Krueger R. & D. Gibbs. 2007. (ed.), “The Sustainable Development Paradox: Urban Political Economy in the United States and Europe.” New York: The Guilford Press.