Shahram Agaajani, the founding architect of Metaform Architects, wished to respond promptly following the publication yesterday of our article on territorial cooperation agreements in response to housing challenges. (Photo: Guy Wolff/archive)

Shahram Agaajani, the founding architect of Metaform Architects, wished to respond promptly following the publication yesterday of our article on territorial cooperation agreements in response to housing challenges. (Photo: Guy Wolff/archive)

Building more will not be enough if we continue to build without a vision. For Shahram Agaajani, architect and founder of Metaform Architects, the real urgency is no longer just about housing, but about the land itself.

For years, our debate on housing has been characterised by a sense of urgency. Prices are rising, so we need to build more. Procedures are holding projects up, so we need to speed them up. There is a shortage of land, so we need to make new sites available.

Perhaps it is time to start addressing not just a housing crisis, but a territorial issue.

The territorial cooperation agreements that have been announced finally reflect a simple truth: Luxembourg can no longer plan its development on a commune-by-commune basis. Our travel patterns, our economy, our landscapes and our needs have long since transcended administrative boundaries. It was high time that our approach to planning, too, began to move beyond them.

This development is to be welcomed. It marks an important step forward. But it now raises an even more fundamental question: that of our territorial model.

When a fire breaks out, no one questions the need to call in the fire brigade. Yet a society does not progress simply by putting out fires. It progresses when it finally takes the time to understand why the fire keeps returning to the same place.

For several decades now, we have been tackling the consequences with great vigour. We have, however, rarely addressed the causes.

These agreements demonstrate a commitment to better coordination between stakeholders. This is a change in approach that is worth highlighting. They now offer the opportunity to go further: to make this coordination the starting point for a genuine territorial strategy. Such a strategy compels us to ask a fundamental question: on what criteria do we decide that one area deserves to be developed rather than another? This is perhaps where a genuine territorial policy begins: when coordination serves not merely to speed up projects, but to bring coherence to the choices that will shape the territory.

For a region is not built simply by coordinating the various stakeholders. It is built by making trade-offs: preserving in one place, transforming in another, and letting go elsewhere.

Even today, we develop sites simply because they are available, because they are suitable for building on, or because they are of property interest. It is much rarer for us to do so because they are the most suitable places to accommodate new residents in the long term.

Meanwhile, urbanisation continues to encroach on areas that require new infrastructure, whilst areas that are already served remain on hold.

This approach also has a cost that we do not talk about enough.

Every new outlying neighbourhood requires new roads, new networks and new public facilities. And then there is the cost of maintaining them. And then their replacement. These costs, which are invisible when a site is first developed, eventually find their way into public finances, construction costs, land prices and, ultimately, the cost of housing itself.

We talk a lot about land prices. We talk far less about the cost of the land.Yet it is always the territory that ends up footing the bill.

A regional strategy is not just about meeting today’s needs. It is about preventing tomorrow’s problems. It involves making trade-offs. It means accepting that it is neither possible nor desirable to build everything everywhere.

Provided that this vision is not limited to coordinating the various stakeholders, but also clearly sets out where Luxembourg chooses to develop, where it wishes to preserve, and what it is prepared to give up.

These cooperation agreements may, for the first time in a long while, offer us the opportunity to move beyond merely managing crises. The most encouraging aspect is undoubtedly that they open up a debate that is finally willing to look beyond the horizon of a single parliamentary term. Envisioning Luxembourg in 2050 is already a step forward. The real challenge now will be to make this ambition the guiding principle behind the decisions we take today. Without this, it risks remaining a distant prospect rather than a direction. For the country itself will continue to reflect these decisions long after their architects have left the political stage.

Luxembourg still enjoys a rare privilege: that of being able to choose what sort of country it wishes to become. But we still need to be prepared to look beyond the next crisis.

We will not merely leave behind homes, roads or infrastructure. We will leave behind a way of living together. Crises come and go. The land remains. It is the land that will tell the story, long after we are gone, of the quality of the choices we have made.