What is the repertoire of concepts, ideas and visions that inform the work of urban planners in the Global South — in Asia, Latin America and Africa? Are they still under the spell of their colonial and postcolonial masters? Or have they developed their own ideas and their own yardsticks, commensurate with the respective culture of their country and region?

This is a very pertinent question at a time when we are witnessing a resurgence of urban planning and urban design at the global level. Indeed, that resurgence is coming about after decades in which planning had fallen into disrepute due to the dominance of neo-liberalism. Evidence of this new focus on planning can be found in the New Urban Agenda, adopted last year by governments across the globe. Among other things, the agenda contains a staunch commitment toward urban planning and urban design with an eye to promoting compact, mixed, integrated, polycentric and balanced urban development.

So amid this resurgence, what can we expect from the concepts, ideas and visions that inform the work of urban planners in the Global South? Let us first look at Asia, which has hosted many ancient urban cultures. In the Indian subcontinent, for instance, one can still visit the magnificent pre-colonial cities of Rajasthan. But oddly, this urban design tradition has not become a source of inspiration for Indian planners. Rather, their mindset is informed by cities such as Mumbai, whose entire layout bears the mark of its colonial past. Or they follow the precepts of modernist urbanism — in other words, Western concepts.

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While in Asia, it’s impossible to forget about China, which has a very long urban tradition. Not only is this the world’s most populous country, but over the past three decades it also has experienced a migration push toward the urban centres unprecedented in human history.

But the way that hyper-urbanization — in Guangzhou, Beijing and many other Chinese megacities — has dealt with centuries’ worth of built heritage does not speak in favour of the urban planners’ regard for the country’s urban design traditions.

By today, for instance, most of the legendary “hutongs” in Beijing have been demolished, to be replaced by concrete blocks. It was only very late — nearly too late — that planners, architects and NGOs started to protest against the demolition of the last hutongs.

As it turns out, those protests have met with some success. This rediscovery of the traditional building culture has brought to the fore the social qualities of the hutongs — for example, the intrinsic value of life in an extended family. Outside the mainstream, there now appears to be a renewed interest in China’s own urban design history among younger planners, who do not wish to simply continue copying Western modernism.