Planning diffusion: agents, mechanisms, networks and theories

Abstract

An important theme of planning history as a research field is how and why planning knowledge has circulated within and between countries, a process planning historians have usually termed ‘diffusion’. These information flows and their resultant impacts soon featured in the work of the post-1970 generation of planning historians. References to how planning in one country or one city was informed and perhaps to some extent shaped by the experiences of other cities and countries appeared in many ostensibly local studies. Cities and countries actively sought or passively received exogenous planning ideas and practices. In some cases, entirely new hubs of knowledge circulation emerged. The whole phenomenon has become a recurrent theme in planning historical work. The label ‘diffusion’ has arisen rather unconsciously, essentially for descriptive convenience. Its derivation within planning history has come from the innovation-diffusion theories developed around the mid-twentieth century within the social sciences, particularly economics and anthropology/cultural geography. Yet it is important to note that planning historical work on ‘diffusion’ also parallels more contemporary concerns. Within political science, urban geography and the wider planning field interest has recently grown in how cities and governments across the world increasingly seek what are perceived as successful models from elsewhere. Studies of this phenomenon have been more explicitly (and somewhat differently) theorized compared to empirically focused historical work. It is therefore valuable to consider what this parallel work has to offer planning history, a theme addressed later in this chapter.