Challenges of technology transfer in a vulnerable world: Some observations from pedagogy and practice

Let me begin by admitting that I share the same misgivings expressed in the introduction to this symposium. I hope to embellish my misgivings with observations and reflections from several occasions of practice, teaching, and curriculum review of recently accredited planning programs in the Global South that required my involvement. I have written about some of these experiences and insights, several of which were shared and co-authored with colleagues and former students. Many of my observations are based on these experiences or research on major planning episodes. This very question of how the values, perspectives, and expertise of the West have shaped the immediate legacy of the urban form of the contemporary Global South is the central theme of my recent book, In the Images of Development: City Design in the Global South (Banerjee 2021). I have argued that, with the beginning of the colonial era, city design in the developing world was largely shaped by the values, institutions, and technologies of the West, and only in the images of the West replacing endogenous built forms. The possible endogeneity of change and development – as was the norm in the canonical cities of pre-colonial times – was totally pre-empted by the exogeneity of the dominant colonial order. Regrettably, images of the West continue to shape the landscape of the Global South today, producing an outcome totally exogenous and alien to the local context. After centuries of dependent urbanisation, this practice has not seemed to change in the post-colonial years continuing until today. In part, this has been a result of the ensuing years of globalisation and the dawn of a new global economic order, amply supported by abundant global capital. High-rise apartment and office towers, shopping malls, entertainment complexes, freeways and subways, and new towns are transforming the emerging landscape of the Global South in search of a global identity and image. These are often copies of the Western urban form. The nine satellite towns of Shanghai, each replicating a generic European urban form and urbanism are cases in point. Such examples abound all over the Global South: “good copies are better than bad originals” seems to be the order of the day. Again the questions we need to address: why cannot there be equally effective originals relevant to the Global South? Why do we have to copy? The script of this exogenous image of development, meanwhile, has failed to address the dualistic and antipodal nature of this emergent landscape – often a legacy of an earlier colonial era, exacerbated by large-scale urban transformations which have displaced and excluded the lower-income residents. Nor does this script include issues of sustainability, especially the current crisis of global warming and climate change. Indeed, it can be argued that the transformation of the Global South in the image of the West has exacerbated the crisis of climate change. If this is inevitable in the Global South’s transition to modernity, why is there not an endogenous response to this transition, or one that is embedded in the endogeneity of local culture? This is a poignant question because there are ample examples of traditional architecture and settlement design that obtained natural cooling or heating and served the requirements of family and community. Examples abound in cities in Africa, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, China and Southeast Asia. Most of the Global South, except for Brazil, China, and India, remains the least carbon-emitting.