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Globalising sustainable urbanism: the role of
international masterplanners
Elizabeth Rapoport
Centre for Urban Sustainability and Resilience, Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering,
University College London, London WC1E 6BT
Email: e.rapoport@ucl.ac.uk
Revised manuscript received 31 October 2013
How do you design a sustainable urban area from scratch? A growing number of urban development
projects, marketing themselves as sustainable or‘eco’ cities, claim to have the answer. This paper focuses
on the companies who create the masterplans that guide the development of such sustainable urban
projects. While these projects are appearing in a diverse array of locations around the world, they are
largely conceived and designed by a small, elite group of international architecture, engineering and
planning firms based in North America and Europe sometimes referred to as the global intelligence corps
(GIC). Drawing on research into these firms, the paper examines the contemporary drivers of interna-
tionalisation in sustainable urban planning and design. These include enhanced professional reputations
and satisfaction for designers and branding benefits for clients with a desire to be seen as modern and
‘global’. The paper then considers the role of international masterplanners in the global dissemination of
ideas in this area, concluding that the GIC and the plans they develop are playing a significant role in the
development of an international model of sustainable urbanism. However, the way in which this model
is actually expressed in material form is strongly influenced by the demands and priorities of the GIC’s
international clients. The paper concludes by reflecting on what this research demonstrates about what
it means for a planning model to be both relational and territorial.
Key words: sustainable urbanism, masterplanning, policy mobilities, eco-city, global intelligence corps
Sustainable urban projects:
a global phenomenon
In recent years, researchers and practitioners in urban
planning and design have focused increasingly on two
concurrent trends: the increase in worldwide urbanisation
rates, and concern about the sustainability of urban areas.
As demand for practical solutions to increase the sustain-
ability of urban living grows, proposals for new urban
developments designed along sustainability principles
have begun to proliferate. These sustainable urban pro-
jects, from small urban infill projects to entire new towns
sometimes called eco-cities, are today an international
phenomenon (Joss 2011). While concern for the natural
environment has been a common theme throughout the
history of Western urban planning, contemporary sustain-
able urban projects bring this concern to the forefront of
the planning process. Their plans and publicity materials
combine bold claims and ambitious targets with attractive
designs and innovative technologies.
This paper focuses on the consultants working for the
private sector architecture, planning, urban design and
engineering firms that produce the strategic and land-use
masterplans that guide the development of sustainable
urban projects. Masterplans are lengthy documents
usually produced in the early stages of project conception
and development. A masterplan is seen as a useful tool to
coordinate the objectives and actions of a wide range of
actors and interests and to help reduce development risks
(Bell 2005; Carmona et al. 2003). While rarely precise
blueprints for future development, masterplans play an
important role in establishing the objectives and basic
parameters of an urban development project. Drawing
on empirical research studying some of the world’s
most prominent masterplanners, this paper outlines the
key factors driving the internationalisation of work in
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Area, 2014, doi: 10.1111/area.12079
The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not
necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG).
© 2014 The Author. Area published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers).
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original work is properly cited.
sustainable urban planning and design. It goes on to con-
sider the role of international masterplanners in the pro-
duction and dissemination of a standardised global model
of sustainable urbanism. The paper concludes by reflect-
ing on what this research demonstrates about what it
means for a planning model to be both relational and
territorial.
The global intelligence corps and the
internationalisation of urban planning
and design
Work on masterplans for high-profile urban projects is
largely carried out by a relatively small, highly interna-
tionalised group of architecture, planning and engineer-
ing firms perceived as having expertise in this area. This
group has been dubbed the global intelligence corps
(GIC) (Olds 2001; Rimmer 1991). Olds defines the global
intelligence corps as ‘the very small number of elite archi-
tectural and planning firms that aspire for prestigious
commissions in cities around the world’ (2001, 42). The
GIC’s status gives it a disproportionate influence on large-
scale urban development projects in major cities (S Ward
2005). The emergence of the GIC is linked to the interna-
tionalisation of firms involved in the built environment
industry. In the second half the 20th century, architectural
practices increasingly began to work abroad in order to
service their globalising clients. By the 1980s and 1990s,
a class of architecture firms with an international presence
emerged (Faulconbridge 2009; McNeill 2009; Knox
and Taylor 2005). Civil and structural engineering
consultancies, who generally work as sub-consultants to
architects, followed the path to internationalisation paved
by their architect partners. Over time these firms began to
develop the global networks needed to establish them-
selves in a variety of new markets (McNeill 2009; Knox
and Taylor 2005). In addition to their work on individual
buildings, most of these firms also do some work in urban
planning and design. Indeed, most large global architec-
ture and engineering firms have separate divisions dedi-
cated specifically to urban planning and design, whose
primary products are masterplans.
Many of the largest and most well-known GIC firms,
from large multidisciplinary companies like AECOM to
smaller ‘starchitect’ practices such as Foster and Partners,
have their headquarters and largest offices in North
America and Western Europe. Despite this, the interna-
tional work of the GIC does not simply follow former
colonial lines of domination. Rather there is an increas-
ingly complex and multidirectional flow of ideas. In
recent years firms from other regions of the world, such as
Lebanon’s Dar al Handasah and Singapore’s RSP have
achieved an increasingly global reach through expansion
and acquisition. However, the research conducted sug-
gested that North American and Western European firms
are disproportionately represented on projects where sus-
tainability is a key element.
The internationalisation of the built environment indus-
try has been the focus of a number of studies in recent
years. Previous research has focused on who these actors
are (Sklair 2005), where they are located (Knox and Taylor
2005; Rimmer 1988 1991), the drivers of internationali-
sation (McNeill 2007 2009; S Ward 2005) and the impact
of internationalisation on these professionals, the compa-
nies they work for and the architecture and urban devel-
opment industries as a whole (Faulconbridge 2010;
McNeill 2009). This paper builds on this body of work but
focuses explicitly, as Larner and Laurie (2010) and Olds
(2001) have done, on the role that key actors, often
working in the private sector, play in the international
diffusion of ideas about and models of urban develop-
ment. Specifically, the aim of this paper is to explore how
and why a small group of largely North American and
European firms have come to be involved in so many
sustainable urban projects internationally, and whether
their work is leading to a convergence around a standard-
ised model of sustainable urbanism.
The role played by transnational professionals in the
global diffusion of ideas is one focus of recent work on the
mobility of urban policy ideas. The policy mobilities lit-
erature argues that urban policies are not fixed, concrete
entities, but social constructions produced and enacted
by networks of human beings (Peck 2011a; McCann
2011). As they travel, policies change and mutate, but
they also must become fixed to a degree in order to be
implemented in the places where they land (McCann
2011; McCann and K Ward 2010).Thus as McCann and K
Ward argue ‘urban policy-making must be understood as
both relational and territorial; as both in motion and
simultaneously fixed, or embedded in place’ (2010, 176).
Methodologically, studying mobile policies requires a
somewhat anthropological approach, moving with trans-
fer agents who ‘produce, circulate, mediate, modify, and
consume policies in their daily work practices’ (McCann
and K Ward 2012, 46). The research underpinning this
paper adopts such an approach. The paper draws on
research carried out in 2011 and 2012, which involved
over 50 interviews, observed practice and participant
observation. The research subjects were practitioners in
firms that are recognised leaders in sustainable urban
planning and design in North America and Western
Europe, as well as their international public and private
sector clients, who are largely based in Asia and the
Middle East. This research also involved reviewing a
number of masterplans produced by some of the research
subjects for large sustainable urban projects. The remain-
der of this paper presents some of the findings of this
research.
2Globalising sustainable urbanism
Area 2014 doi: 10.1111/area.12079
© 2014 The Author. Area published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
Contemporary drivers of supply of and
demand for international expertise
Currently the GIC are involved in the majority of high-
profile sustainable urban projects around the world. This
section explains why this is by exploring the drivers of
internationalisation on both the supply and demand side
of these projects. To put this more precisely, it looks at why
GIC firms want to work on large urban projects abroad,
why there is a continued international demand for their
services and how this is affected by demand for expertise
specifically in sustainability.
For many GIC firms the motivation to work internation-
ally is driven by an economic imperative either to grow, or
simply to maintain turnover levels. Many have faced
shrinking local markets for their services as a result of the
recent financial crisis. While planning projects do not
usually command high fees, several interviewees reported
that for some companies the planning side of the business
is seen as a ‘loss leader’, because getting in on a project at
the masterplanning stage can help secure the more lucra-
tive commission to design iconic or signature buildings
for the development. Many firms also find working in a
foreign context satisfying, as new markets offer opportu-
nities to try novel and innovative designs that would be
less likely to be built in their more traditional markets.
Locations rife with wealthy clients looking to put a mark
on the urban landscape, such as Kuwait in the 1980s and
Dubai in the 2000s, have provided something of a play-
ground for architects (Provoost and Vanstiphout 2011;
Mahgoub 2004).
The relative lack of regulation in such environments can
be enjoyable for designers accustomed to the long,
drawn-out processes required to gain planning approval
in their own countries. Sustainable design and technology
are rapidly evolving with a constant stream of new ideas
and innovations. Unfortunately building codes and plan-
ning policies, not to mention attitudes towards new and
different ideas, are, in many contexts, not keeping pace.
This creates a frustrating situation for designers who may
genuinely want to try out new ideas, as well as to be seen
as being at the forefront of innovation in sustainable urban
planning and design. Projects that offer the opportunity to
challenge the status quo and try out new ideas and tech-
nologies are an attractive prospect for an ambitious and at
times idealistic sub-segment of the GIC. As one US-based
engineer put it, ‘we are able to be super experimental in
places like China. We’re learning a lot and we’re doing
things there that we couldn’t do here because of policy
barriers’.
There are also reputational benefits to working abroad.
Boutique, ‘starchitect’ architecture firms in particular
build their reputations by working on high-profile, pres-
tigious commissions. More commercially driven firms
often use conventional commissions to subsidise more
exciting but less profitable projects, which can signifi-
cantly enhance their reputation and lead to additional
work (McNeill 2006; Olds 2001). Projects branded as
‘eco’ or zero-carbon, which often attract a great deal of
publicity, can certainly have such an impact. This is the
case even for some projects that are never built. The
London-based engineering consultancy Arup, designers of
the now moribund Dongtan Eco-City project, developed a
reputation as early leaders in this industry despite the fact
that the project was never constructed.
Although an increasingly geographically diverse range
of practitioners are working on large urban projects, the
research conducted suggests that the services of the GIC
remain in demand internationally for sustainable urban
projects for two reasons in particular.The first is branding.
In architecture and property development a plan devel-
oped by a prestigious firm or celebrity architect can help
increase a project’s profile and help it obtain the political
support and investment necessary to take the project
forward (Abramson 2010; Wu 2007; McNeill 2007;
S Ward 2002; Olds 2001). Explaining his company’s
repeated use of a United States-based firm to do
masterplans, a senior manager at a large Chinese property
development company claimed that if he used a domestic
masterplanner ‘we’d . . . just end up with something like
what everybody else has, and so it also came down to the
market differentiation aspect’. Discussing the reasons
foreign clients come to his company, a British engineer
put it down to two factors, what he called ‘kudos’, that is,
‘architects who are generally speaking more expert at
creating a public image and publicity’, as well as track
record because Western companies ‘have done it before’.
This engineer’s point about track record speaks to the
second driver of demand for the GIC’s services in sustain-
able urban planning and design internationally, that is, the
perception that local expertise is lacking and/or that a
global approach is needed. The research found that for-
eigners are often hired specifically for their ‘global’
approach and aesthetic. Rather than travelling around
imposing a homogenised urbanism, international practi-
tioners are often sought out by clients who see them as
best placed to deliver the modern, global design that they
believe will help them attract the desired people and
companies to their development. Related to this is the fact
that sustainable urban planning and design is a relatively
specialised field. Interviewees emphasised that among
many property developers there is a perception that to get
the newest and most innovative ideas or simply the nec-
essary expertise requires hiring experts from elsewhere.
There are relatively few urban development projects
around the world that have incorporated ambitious sus-
tainability objectives, meaning that the consultants that
have worked on these projects are in demand.
Globalising sustainable urbanism 3
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© 2014 The Author. Area published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
This situation creates an opportunity for those consult-
ants who can successfully sell their expertise in the field
of planning and sustainability. For the moment at least,
this dynamic appears to be operating to the advantage of
large international companies with both experience
working on sustainable urban projects and the market-
ing prowess to successfully promote this. This situation
may change as domestic markets evolve. As others have
observed, the international nature of the built environ-
ment industry is driven in part by a belief that foreign
practitioners will bring in new ideas that local profes-
sionals can learn from (Chen et al. 2009; Wu 2007;
Olds 2001). Eventually, there should be no reason why
local firms can’t do the work themselves. Similarly,
developer preferences may change as geographies of
land ownership and influence shift; in particular, the
increasingly global reach of property developers from
Asia and the Middle East is likely to alter the composi-
tion and operation of the GIC.
The GIC and sustainable urban projects
worldwide: convergence or divergence?
Given the breadth of their work on sustainable urban
projects around the world, is the GIC contributing to the
emergence of a standardised model of sustainable urban-
ism? International consultants in the built environment
industry have in the past been seen as agents of structural
forces, in particular globalisation and neoliberalism. Such
forces, and the interurban competition they engender, it is
argued, can drive the replication of similar patterns of
urban development around the world (Percival and Waley
2012; McNeill 2009; Bunnell 2004; King 2004). The work
delivered by international consultants may be more glob-
ally than locally oriented, and ideas initially developed
for one context may be presented again in another
(Bunnell and Das 2010; Banerjee 2009; Adam 2008;
Haila 1997).
The research conducted found that masterplans pre-
pared by GIC firms do contain a fairly uniform and con-
sistent set of ideas for enhancing the sustainability of
urban development. They repeat a similar menu of
options such as bicycle lanes, bus rapid transit, sustain-
able urban drainage systems, combined heat and power
systems, and renewable energy. These plans also tend to
cite a small group of precedents and examples of ‘good
practice’ that sustainable urban projects should aspire to.
These include projects such as Hammarby Sjöstad, in
Stockholm, Sweden, Vauban in Freiburg, Germany, or
particular interventions such as Bogotá and Curitibas’ bus
rapid transit systems.
Such ideas move rapidly among the relatively small
group of companies working on masterplans for sustain-
able urban projects. This occurs as these companies work
in consortium with one another, or on design competi-
tions where aspects of their work are made public, and as
individuals move between companies. The appetite for
new and innovative ideas is so great, and the exchange of
ideas between GIC firms so rapid, that new options may
be added to the menu even before there is much evidence
that they work. Such is the case with the personal rapid
transit system (PRT) incorporated into the Foster and
Partners plan for the zero-carbon Masdar City. PRT was
quickly taken up by other firms and presented as an
option in masterplans even though it has yet to be suc-
cessfully implemented at an urban scale.
The tendency to repeat ideas across multiple
masterplans is related to the constraints imposed by the
commercial environment of the urban planning and
design industry. Fees for masterplanning commissions
tend to be low, particularly given the volume and com-
plexity of the work involved. Interviewees at one firm
studied in the research described preparing masterplans
for cities of a million or more in just eight weeks. Project
budgets rarely allow much scope for research into new
and innovative designs and technologies.The result is that
practitioners sometimes recycle sustainability content
from one masterplan to the next. Their repeated referenc-
ing of the same ideas and precedents as good sustainable
urbanism, or ‘ideas that work’ (Peck 2011b), contributes
to the impression that there is a global consensus on what
constitutes sustainable urbanism.
Based on the preceding discussion it is possible to see
the GIC as a powerful globalising force, encouraging a
convergence (around a Western model) of ideas about
what sustainable urbanism means, possibly at the expense
of local ideas and innovations. However, the idea that
planning ideas can be imposed on weak and powerless
locals is outdated; as a number of authors have demon-
strated, today planning ideas are actively imported as
much as they are exported (Perera 2010; S Ward 2010;
Nasr and Volait 2003; Verdeil 2003). Contemporary
urban leaders use ideas and models from elsewhere
shrewdly, interpreting and adapting them to suit their own
purposes (Faulconbridge 2009; Chen et al. 2009; Shatkin
2007; Olds 2001; S Ward 1999).
Unlike when foreign ideas were introduced under con-
ditions of colonialism or development aid with all the
power disparities this entailed, today the clients who hire
the GIC are active agents in, rather than passive recipients
of, the globalisation of urban planning and design prac-
tice (Sklair 2005). The perceived expertise of GIC firms in
sustainable urban planning and design can be used as a
justification for hiring an international firm, even if there
are other reasons for this decision. In addition, the incor-
poration of sustainability into a project is often done quite
strategically. As discussed above, interviews revealed
that property developers may use sustainability creden-
4Globalising sustainable urbanism
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© 2014 The Author. Area published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
tials to attract the desired tenants, or to differentiate their
project from other, similar developments.
Generic ideas about sustainable urbanism will need to
be translated in order to be incorporated into a project in
a particular place. In this process the GIC’s ideas about
sustainable urbanism are adapted by their international
clients. A high-ranking government official in a city in
Asia explained, ‘(consultant name) has come in and
worked with me but I must tell you that even when he
worked with me I have already refined and honed his
initial ideas because some things work and some things
don’t work’. This process of adaptation may go on for
some time. Urban development projects can take years or
even decades to complete. As GIC firms command quite
high fees, it is rarely cost-effective to retain them beyond
masterplanning stage. International designers, then, are
almost always long gone before the ideas they propose are
implemented. Decisions about what is incorporated into a
final masterplan and ultimately built are likely to be made
by the client and the local designers and contractors who
take on the project after the work of the international firm
is complete. This then goes some way towards explaining
why masterplans prepared by the GIC can appear to look
somewhat generic. These plans are more a starting point
than a prescription for what will actually be built. Accord-
ing to some practitioners interviewed, there is a certain
element, particularly in the early concept development
stage of the masterplanning process, of showing the client
a large number of possibilities. Clients then get to decide
which of the many options presented to them make sense
for their project. While outsiders can highlight and
encourage particular ideas, ultimately those that will be
taken up are likely to be those that best serve a client’s
interests.
Conclusion
The model of sustainable urbanism that is emerging from
the work of the GIC in sustainable urban planning and
design exists primarily as an idea, or an ideal. It does not
have a point of origin, or an original form from which to
mutate. Rather, it develops and evolves through the day-
to-day work of international practitioners. Sustainable
urbanism is what Roy (2011) has referred to as a ‘model in
circulation’ composed through transnational references
and cross-border borrowing. The sustainable masterplans
that the GIC produces encapsulate the relational/
territorial dialectic of contemporary urban policymaking
highlighted by McCann and K Ward. These plans are often
quite literally in motion. A masterplan created by a busy
firm of international consultants might take shape on a
laptop on a flight from New York to Shanghai. Yet, as this
paper has demonstrated, masterplans are also substan-
tially influenced by the interests and concerns of the
people who commission them, as well as myriad factors
in the places in which they are ultimately translated into
real urban places.
How can such an apparently fluid set of ideas constitute
a planning ‘model’? Peck (2011b) suggests that we under-
stand a model to be a crystallisation of a bundle of prac-
tices and conventions, linking particular problems with
supposed solutions. In this context, the bundle of prac-
tices is the relatively standardised menu of options found
in GIC masterplans. Seeing the model that the GIC is
taking around the world as a bundle or menu of options
helps to explain local variations in sustainable urban pro-
jects. The production of a masterplan is just one step in a
long process of translating this model into material form.
Large urban development projects are developed over a
long period of time and are shaped by the aims and
objectives of their developers, of which sustainability is
only one. As a project evolves, it may take on a shape
substantially different from the model of sustainable
urbanism employed in the original masterplan. This raises
the question, which bears further exploration, of how
much a model can mutate before it becomes something
else. As Faulconbridge (this issue) points out, such muta-
tions may mean that the impact of a completed project on
sustainability may be very different from those that the
GIC intended when developing a masterplan.
Very few of the sustainable masterplans developed by
the GIC will ever be translated into real urban projects.
For those that are, the ideas and designs contained in the
masterplan will be changed and adapted over time,
leading to localised interpretations of an international
model. Still, through their role in deciding which ideas to
peddle internationally, the GIC in sustainable urban plan-
ning and design wields considerable power in both estab-
lishing a discourse about what is unsustainable about
current urbanisation patterns and defining the set of solu-
tions that can and should be used to address this.
Acknowledgements
The research underpinning this article was supported by an engi-
neering doctorate studentship in the Centre for Urban Sustain-
ability and Resilience at University College London, funded by
the UK Environmental and Physical Sciences Research Council
and Happold Consulting. I am grateful to Susan Moore and
Andrew Harris for including me in this special section, and for
their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am also
indebted to two anonymous peer reviewers whose comments
helped me improve and clarify my arguments. Any mistakes or
omissions are of course my own.
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6Globalising sustainable urbanism
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© 2014 The Author. Area published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers)
