Go South, Young Planner, Go South!

Abstract

This commentary calls for the deeper institutionalization of urban experiences in the global South into PAB-accredited planning programs in North America. While international “development” planning has been effectively questioned by the rise of the BRICS, transnational planning practice, and recent research emphasizing a relational accounting of international urban development, I urge that development studies—and critiques therein—remain an important backdrop to international planning education for one key reason. Knowledge of development’s trajectory as an idea and as a problematized practice in the global South facilitates a critical resistance to the (re-)technocratization of global planning education and practice. Three approaches to incorporating voices and experiences from the global South into North American planning curricula are suggested: harnessing case studies, practitioner networks, and examples of thought-leaders from the global South to enrich the diversity of references on which our students can call.