ABSTRACT
Countries are wholes. How infrastructure is planned is best studied within these whole contexts – hence the next six chapters. The implications for the transfer of lessons and approaches between countries are obvious: such transfer is done with considerable risk. All institutional arrangements should have a sign on them: beware, transfer at your peril. One of the most intensive studies on international transfer was undertaken in the Netherlands, by Martin de Jong in 1999, on the scope to transfer transport infrastructure innovations (De Jong 2008). Because the Dutch are very aware of international practice, such transferability debates occur all the time. Equally, planners at least often look in on Dutch practice, and have tried to bring good ideas that they have encountered there back home (Ward 1999). More recently, Dutch planners and planning academics have tended to view such external admiration with scepticism, doubting whether they have any practice worth exporting (Wolsink 2003). There is a fine line to walk, therefore, for an out-sider student of recent Dutch planning of any kind, and perhaps most of all in the fields of infrastructure and national planning, the primary targets of this chapter. I am obliged to be sceptical by Dutch expert views, but remain on the search for wisdom and good practice, even if I know this must be tempered with Dutch realism.
