Limits on the International Mobility of Planning Ideas and Practices

This chapter adopts a historical approach and a wide geographical perspective to examine the international circulation of ideas and practices, as planning knowledge from one country spreads and is applied elsewhere. Examples of travelling ideas and practices include cases variously involving affluent Western countries, the former Soviet bloc and former colonial and present post-colonial worlds. This chapter shows that planning ideas and practices are rarely successfully transferred internationally in unchanged form. Instead, they become re-inventions of imported ideas and practices as a conscious or unconscious process of adjustment, adaptation, hybridisation, or synthesis occurs. Context and agency are hugely important if global circuits of planning knowledge are to be positively harnessed. To work effectively in new settings, exogenous ideas, and practices ideally need thorough deconstruction and reassembly to reflect local needs and capacities. This is more likely in affluent countries with democratic, pluralistic governance, mature civil societies, and developed technical capacities. However, even these circumstances cannot guarantee successful deployment of exogenous knowledge. Inappropriate transfers of planning ideas and practices have been more likely in poorer countries with less democratic regimes, where civil societies and technical capacities are less developed. These risks increase if control of which ideas and practices are adopted (and how this occurs) lies outside the receiving country, so that they are, to some extent, imposed, however noble the underlying intentions. Mitigation of these risks can occur if some local negotiation is possible. Otherwise, unmediated ideas and practices from elsewhere are likely to be actively contested within the new host country.