Decoloniality of International Comparative Planning Research

This chapter focuses on decoloniality in planning praxis and how decolonial international comparative planning research may look. Comparative studies can facilitate the drawing out of gradations in each context, learning from differences and similarities, while being mindful of the criticality of comparative decoloniality as an area of study in its own right. The chapter challenges the mainstream understanding of international comparative planning/study and underlines the need to redefine it in a decolonial way. It also challenges the domination of global north concepts of urbanism and calls for an understanding of international comparative planning studies and the need to see it in a decolonial way. This is not to say that a decolonial lens is a panacea, nor that there should be some sentimental and anachronistic notion of returning to some precolonial past or to use decoloniality as a naive populist political discourse. Decoloniality can help redefine the issues at stake and find different epistemological and ontological ways to overcome past injustices and, as planners, be something that we can understand and use for future research, practice, and pedagogy. The chapter concludes with suggestions for planning research, pedagogy, and practice on how decolonial comparative planning research could look while cautioning against its’ limitations, misuse, and misunderstanding.