Abstract

A wide range of contemporary approaches to emergent gravity treat classical spacetime geometry not as a fundamental structure but as an effective description that becomes valid only within particular physical regimes. This family of approaches includes thermodynamic formulations of gravity, entanglement-based and holographic constructions, and pre-geometric frameworks in which spacetime arises from fundamentally non-spatial degrees of freedom. Although these programs differ substantially in their microscopic assumptions, mathematical tools, and motivating principles, they nevertheless exhibit a set of strikingly similar structural commitments concerning the status, scope, and breakdown of spacetime geometry. In this work, we develop a detailed comparative synthesis of these approaches, focusing on the shared features that recur across them rather than on their technical differences. We argue that, taken together, these features support a unified interpretive perspective in which classical spacetime geometry functions as a stable macroscopic regime that arises only under specific conditions, remains robust against microscopic variation within those conditions, and ceases to be applicable outside them. This perspective closely parallels the role played by macroscopic phases in other areas of physics, where collective descriptions emerge from underlying degrees of freedom and are meaningful only within restricted regions of parameter space. The aim of this paper is not to propose a new model of emergent gravity or to privilege one existing framework over others. Instead, it seeks to make explicit a structural perspective that is already implicit across several influential research programs. By articulating this shared structure in a model-agnostic way, the analysis clarifies points of convergence within emergent gravity research, highlights the conceptual unity underlying diverse approaches, and provides a coherent framework for understanding how spacetime geometry can emerge as an effective description without being fundamental.