Lost in Translation? Comparing Planning Responses to Urban Growth in the Global North and South

Abstract

Governing rapidly growing urban regions is one of the key challenges facing planners, policymakers, and politicians today, especially in terms of governance at the local level. Research and practice have mainly been shaped by the differentiated experiences of "more" and "less" developed countries. This study evaluates a comparative urban governance research project that sought to go beyond these confines to explore the synergies and differences between a "developed" and a "less developed" city region (using Brisbane and Southeast Queensland in Australia and metropolitan Semarang in Indonesia). In critically reflecting on the governance lessons learned from both, as well as the project's methods, we identify what can be gained from comparison, which involves learning from both localities' struggle to manage spatially dispersed and fragmented urban-rural interfaces.