ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the 'community of inquirers ' who make up the field of scholarship and practical engagement associated with planning as a project for shaping urban and regional/territorial futures. It shows that the planning idea has the properties of a continually evolving 'contingent universal'. Back in the mid-twentieth century, a simple uprooting and transplanting transfer process could be justified by the belief in a single, 'universally valid' pathway for human social development. The chapter argues firstly that the study of travelling concepts and practice in the planning field provides a valuable angle through which the situatedness and contingencies of specific institutional sites of planning activity can be better understood. It shows that transnational learning works most productively through rich narratives – in-depth cases – rather than through 'best practice' summaries or attempts at typologies which systematize qualities of context and try to match them with qualities of experiences.
