ABSTRACT
In this chapter, American land use planning is considered in “cross-cultural perspective”: how and why does it differ from other countries, particularly Britain and Canada.1 The differences are fascinating, and there is added interest in the question as to whether time is narrowing or widening them.2 Whatever the answer to this question, there is no doubt that there is benefit to be gained by a comparative international perspective. This does not mean that there are “lessons to be learned.” Far from it: policies are the cultural products of history, time, and place: they are rarely exportable. But, as Haar notes in the quotation at the beginning of this section, comparisons prompt new questions (or at least reformulation of old ones) and, in contemplating these, new policy initiatives may emerge, molded to fit a different political terrain. Thus a mutant of “enterprise zones” traveled from Britain to the United States with the same name masking significant differences. Interestingly, the efficacy of both was similar, and far less than anticipated. There was, however, more “traffic” in the opposite direction, first with the War on Poverty programs, and later with economic development programs —by which the British were impressed because of the perceived success of projects such as Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace, and Pittsburgh’s Golden Triangle. Here, it seemed, was very tangible evidence that free market policies worked! (Apparently the itinerary for visiting British dignitaries excluded the Renaissance Center in Detroit.)
These tangible values of international comparison are somewhat unusual, but there are other benefits, as Wolman notes:
The utility of comparing the United States with foreign countries frequently is seen to lie in the potential for transferring the policies or practices of those countries to the United States. While the possibility of such transference does exist, the difficulty inherent in transplanting across systems of divergent political, social, and economic characteristics should not be underestimated. Perhaps a more valuable benefit to be gained from comparative analysis is that such analysis can both broaden the sense of the possible and provide a framework for better understanding our own behavior. The process of comparative analysis should lead to questioning what frequently is simply assumed without question.
