ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I present my own experience as a graduate of the masters program in Architecture and City Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who attended Tsinghua University in Beijing to became the first American to earn a Chinese doctorate in urban planning, and who has continued to remain engaged in Chinese urban planning from bases both in Canada and in the United States. The aspect of my experience that is “in reverse” is that the usual transnational educational path for planning students seeking higher degrees is from “South” to “North” (which includes Europe and Japan, as well as North America), or from “East” to “West.” Here, I try to apply my reversed perspective to the understanding of how and why ideas and practices of planning do or do not “travel,” and in particular to how a moment in history affects the reception of foreign ideas. More personally, I reflect on how my education at MIT prepared me (or how it didn’t) for further learning and action in China, and, inversely, how experiencing Chinese planning provided a frame for appreciating my American education.
