What prospects for urban policy in Europe?

On the eve of enlargement, the European Union's cities and regions confront a crisis in the policy environment. Elected governments of towns and regions have struggled unsuccessfully to maintain their established programmes, investments and planning in the face of neo‐liberal economic and welfare policies adopted by national governments and enforced as part of the criteria for membership of the euro zone. Those with the institutional capacity and resources to do so have turned to the patchwork of largely unco‐ordinated EU special programmes to supplement their resources, but have undermined their self‐determination in the process. Recent embryonic attempts at a more systematic and comprehensive approach to European cities and regions, the European Spatial Development Perspective, could perhaps become the basis for a coherent new order. The paper explores these potentialities, but also the risks that the new approach is over‐dependent on a single and rather weak concept—sustainability—and might just become another chapter in the chronology of disjointed initiatives.