The international diffusion of planning: A review and a Canadian case study

Abstract

This article notes the different approaches to the international diffusion of planning ideas and practices. It briefly reviews the principal body of work by planning historians to highlight the key themes of such studies. This previous work is then used to develop a simple typology of diffusional episodes, based on the power relationship between the two parties to the diffusion relationship. Thus several forms of imposition and several forms of borrowing are identified. This typology is then used to inform a case study of Canadian planning, focusing particularly on Vancouver. The case study shows how Canada's planning was shaped by recurrent encounters with two major international planning traditions, those of Britain and the US, particularly the latter. These encounters initially resulted in episodes of undiluted borrowing, alternately, from both traditions. Increasingly after 1945, however, these borrowings became more selective, first from Britain and then from the US. By the late 1960s, other international influences were also apparent and Canadian planning exhibited a more synthetic approach, achieving real distinctiveness. Interpretations based on context and the autonomous roles of individuals are considered but greatest emphasis is placed on the role of the reformist and professional milieux in determining the origins and extent of Canadian borrowings. The article concludes by suggesting that the existence, however weak, of such milieux within the country importing planning ideas and practices may be crucial to the distinction between borrowing and imposition.

Human and biophysical legacies shape contemporary urban forests: A literature synthesis

“…Meanwhile, street trees were extensively planted by private residents in the late 1800s for shade and ornamental values in Ottawa, Ontario, with politicians seeking to emulate the tree-lined streets in US cities (Dean, 2005). Indeed, urban planning trends -including park design and planting movements -have long exhibited diffusion across international borders, as evidenced by Vancouver, British Columbia adopting park design proposals from both American and British planners (Ward, 1999). By the end of the 19th century, the ubiquitous presence of trees in North American cities contributed to an urban planning and design norm described by Lawrence (2006, 221) as "a model for the world.…”

‘Who else would we speak to?’ National Policy Networks in post-devolution Britain: The case of spatial planning

“…14 Finally within planning, there has been a focus on policy circulation or circuits that has considered the transfer of metanarratives between the academy and practice and between states (Ward, 1999;Harris and Moore, 2013;Wood, 2015). Ward focuses on the mechanisms for policy diffusion, identifying different pathways of influence that reflect the models of policy transfer and communities.…”

Urban policy mobility, anti-politics, and histories of the transnational municipal movement

“…Out of this context emerged late nineteenth and early twentieth-century policies on poor relief, employment and unemployment, housing and town planning, and urban services including water, sewerage, electricity, gas, and public transport. This last insight brings to mind transnational histories of planning which consider how planning ideologies and practices emerged from transnational processes and flows (King 2003(King , 2004, transnational discourses (Ward 1999(Ward , 2000, and transnational communities of practice (Healey 2010). In this connection, it should be noted that urban and social policy associated with the Urban International owed something to earlier and more distanciated colonial connections (King 2004, McFarlane 2008, Nasr and Volait 2003.…”