Reducing land take, set out in the EU's target of no net land take by 2050, and steering cities toward more compact, low-carbon forms are central objectives of the European green transition. These goals rest on a long-standing planning assumption: that as demographic and economic pressures stabilise, the need for urban expansion eases, opening scope for densification, consolidation, and reuse. This paper revisits that assumption through an analysis of urban expansion across European Functional Urban Areas over the past two decades.

The evidence suggests the relationship between urban expansion and its conventional drivers has weakened, with land take continuing across a wide range of demographic and economic contexts rather than tracking them closely. This raises the possibility that contemporary expansion is shaped less by current demand than by inherited development trajectories and structural momentum - dynamics that sit awkwardly with land-take reduction and compact-city agendas.

We argue this points to a blind spot in green-transition planning: instruments calibrated to demographic signals and visible growth pressure may systematically overlook expansion that persists on its own momentum, across both growing and declining cities. Reframing land-take governance as a question of trajectory and lock-in, rather than demand management, offers planning a more robust basis for aligning urban form with environmental objectives. The paper reflects on what this shift implies for how planning knowledge about urban growth is constructed, and for the spatial dimension of climate planning.