Introduction

Cross-national exchanges of ideas are nothing new to modern town planning as Sutcliffe and Ramsay have discussed above. Characteristically, however, early comparisons were made informally-by search parties, for instance, such as that sent to Germany under the guidance of Horsfall by Birmingham City Council in the early 1900s, or by networks of personal communication between professionals/academics and charismatic individuals, such as those which sprung up between Britain and North America at much the same time and expressed in the work of Unwin and Adams (Simpson, 1985). These means of promoting comparisons are now well-tested and remain powerful and influential today.