It is politically necessary that a national symbol as important as a university should in no way be seen as inferior to any other in the world and the most secure way of ensuring respectability in the foundation of a new institution is to reproduce, as closely as possible, the most respected of the world’s academic centres. Thus, many of the universities and technical institutes founded in the last thirty years to provide a training for the urgently needed bureaucracies and professional cardres of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean have been closely modelled upon and frequently affiliated to those of Europe and North America.

It was with a concern for the relevance and effectiveness of architectural and physical planning education that, in 1970, a small working group was set up in the Development Planning Unit (DPU) of University College London to examine ways to influence the content and teaching methods of such universities in the face of unprecedented conditions of urban growth and scarcity of resources. The result of this group’s study and debate was a proposal for the establishment of a team of experienced teachers who, on invitation from institutions in the Third World, would conduct “demonstration courses” with the staff and students of schools of architecture, planning and public administration. It was argued that this would have a greater chance of success in engendering attitudinal and institutional change in professional undergraduate courses than the established system of post-graduate studies for individual overseas students in the metropolitan countries.

In August 1972, the Nuffield Foundation granted funds to the DPU for the staffing of a three-man team to design and run an Educational Extension Service on a full-time basis for a trial period of three years, during which it would offer a two-month course on Housing in Urban Development to university level institutions in the Commonwealth. The travel and subsistence of the team, while abroad, were to be borne by specific Technical Assistance requests to the UK Government in cases where the host institution would not meet them.