International Planning Guidelines and Diffusion to Local Planning

The 21st century has seen movement to advance universal principles for urban planning advocated by leading planners’ organisations and embodied in policy documents and sustainable development guidelines adopted by the United Nations. Initially argued for by the Global Planners Network and its member associations, the movement towards a revitalised urban planning was taken up by UN-Habitat and became central to Habitat&s;s 2015 International Guidelines on Urban and Territorial Planning , to the UN&s;s 2016 New Urban Agenda , and to the Habitat Professionals Forum&s;s 2022 Roadmap to Recovery . These policies and guidelines were meant to remediate slow diffusion of professional planning innovations globally but had potential to eliminate or reduce national differences in planning practices reflective of politics, economics, and culture. The ability of professional planners’ organisations and UN drafters to identify core principles of planning that transcend such national differences is a testament to the respect for context that planning has nurtured as a field.