ABSTRACT
“From the ‘Garden City’ to the ‘Smart City’: Literary Urban Studies, Policy Mobility Research and Travelling Urban Models” develops a literary studies approach to policy mobility research and specifically to research on the global diffusion of blueprints for urban development. The chapter initially points out the lack of attention to narrative patterns, rhetoric, visualisation and other strategies of persuasion in existing policy mobility research. In order to highlight the extent to which travelling models rely on – broadly speaking – literary strategies for their persuasive effect, the chapter offers a detailed analysis of the narrative structures, visualisations, and of the use of literary and cultural references, collective symbols and established patterns of interpretation in planning documents, policy papers, marketing materials and other pragmatic, non-literary texts central to the diffusion of the ‘Garden City’ concept. Such strategies can to a significant extent explain the ease and speed with which the concept was adopted in a variety of different cultural contexts and the changes it underwent in the process. Finally, this approach to policy mobility is briefly shown to be applicable to other key fields in recent global urban development, such as the numerous blueprints for ‘smart’ or ‘sustainable’ urban development.
