Spatial governance and planning policy transfer in the Global South. An introduction

The transfer of policy knowledge, approaches, and practices has become ubiquitous across different policy areas (Dolowitz and Marsh, 1996, 2012; Stone, 2012; Evans, 2017). Municipalities, regional authorities, and national governments routinely search for inspiration and solutions to their policy challenges abroad, including in the fields of spatial governance and planning 1 . One of the most important reasons behind this trend – on the demand side – is the growing complexity of spatial development challenges in an increasingly volatile and uncertain world facing globalisation and now also deglobalisation trends (Williamson, 2021), multiple crises (political, economic, and environmental challenges, housing shortage, migration, disruptions of global value chains, etc.) and the growing interdependency between policy sectors and levels of government (Cerf, 2019). Under these conditions, the tasks that decision and policymakers face are increasingly multifarious and compound, which requires new knowledge, diverse skills, and templates for policy (Stead, 2012). At the same time, policy transfer is also driven by the supply side as new technologies and ideas to tackle urban challenges emerge, for instance, based on big data, smart city platforms, sponge city solutions, renewable energy, circularity, or – more on the process side – on digital citizen engagement tools or co-creation and deliberative innovations, just to name a few (Athey, 2017).