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The relationships between cities play a central role in this study. A range of economic and political characteristics bring certain cities into conversation with one another, while pushing others further apart. The learning process often requires localities to work closely together, sharing private technical and political information and, in many instances, spending extended periods collaborating. Peck and Theodore (2001, 2010b ), for example, present instances of the transfer of poverty alleviation policies between the UK and the US during the Thatcher/Reagan and Blair/Clinton eras, arguing that the friendship between the political leaders predisposed the governments to collaborate. The manner in which commonalities in government and policymaking contexts enable policies to transfer across socio-political boundaries is also evident in studies of the transnationalization of the business improvement district, where geographical proximity between the UK and Europe was disregarded in favour of exchange of political associations (Ward 2007a, 2011). There have also been studies of similar accounts of ideological exchanges between the former Soviet countries (Cook et al. 2014b; Offe 1996), as well as between European cities after the Second World War (Clarke 2010; Vion 2002). In such instances of “municipal diplomacy” (Saunier 2002: 526), cities are not merely importers or exporters of policy but part of the global system of power relations in which policy circulates.

Cities at times also search for new ideas beyond their most obvious comparators, perhaps assuming that there is more to appreciate from engaging with difference. Mahon and Macdonald (2010) present a case study comparing poverty alleviation programs in Toronto and Mexico City. In this instance, the two cities exchanged ideas particularly because their different approaches offered innovation to each city. However, in exchanging local solutions, Toronto and Mexico City strengthened their relationship, thereby demonstrating that policy exchange is instrumental in forming relationships between localities. In McCann’s (2011b) study of Bing Thom, a Vancouver architect-consultant hired by Fort Worth, Texas to “Vancouverize” the city, he underscores the ability of a policy mobilizer to influence development across localities despite considerable differences between the places. These policy mobilities studies provide a foundation for my research of the manner in which cultural, economic and political relations between and within cities were used by South African policymakers to advance (or subvert) particular actions and decisions regarding BRT.

It is also important to note the imbalance of power between cities of the global north and south (Massey 2011; Robinson 2011), as well as across cities of the global south (Bunnell and Das 2010 for urban policy transfer from Kuala Lumpur to Hyderabad, and Hains 2011 for transfer between Dubai and Delhi). Massey (2011), for instance, outlines a trade agreement between London and Caracas whereby London provided technical advice on a range of urban issues from transportation planning to waste disposal in exchange for a reduced price on oil, which London then used to fuel the city’s buses, funding a 50 percent reduction in fares for the poorest people of the city. The relationship between the cities became the subject of contestation in 2008 when the newly elected Mayor Boris Johnson cancelled the agreement. This account provides evidence of the “politics of place” as the “outcome of the contested negotiation of physical proximity”, which is also “explicitly relational” beyond the confines of the city (2011: 4). Such a contested terrain is also found by Robinson in her analysis of city development strategies (2011). She looks at the circulation of city strategies as a technique for governance, introduced in Johannesburg and then disseminated by the World Bank and Cities Alliance. “What might appear to be an instance of the local application of global policy discourse in the Johannesburg case”, Robinson writes, “was a strongly locally determined policy process, shaped by quite specific political dynamics” (2011: 34). Such claims offer a counterhegemonic view that policy practice can always be traced to foreign or western origins, a point critical to my study, which recognizes the multiplicity of sites of origin that are included or disregarded in the circulation of best practice.

How Cities Learn considers how policy exchange and adoption connects places. Mobilities theorists have provided a variety of metaphors for interpreting the way in which a policy moves through a system – the train moves along the tracks (Latour 1993, 2005), a car at a petrol station (Normack 2006) or water in a creek (Tsing 2000), all of which presuppose the relationship between the object and the conditions of its mobility. Tsing (2000: 337) reasons that “a focus on circulations shows us the movement of people, things, ideas, or institutions, but what it does not show is how this movement depends on defining tracks and grounds or scales and units of agency… If we imagined creeks, perhaps the model would be different; we might notice the channel as well as the water moving”. These entities – the train, car and water – circulate through the system while maintaining their connection to the spatial elements – the track, petrol station and creek bed. These movements underscore the “networked nature of interconnectedness” (Lester 2006: 135). Even though the relationship between the movable objects and place is provisional, ephemeral and transient – the train moves to a different part of the track, the car to another petrol station and the water through the creek – it remains linked through the system. This focus on intergovernmental mobility considers the way in which the (metaphorical) tracks, petrol station and creek bed promote circulations by creating a conducive context for their continuity. Neither the terrain nor its connections are “spatially fixed geographical containers for social process” (Hannam et al. 2006: 5), but these metaphors can help us understand the inter-urban and intra-urban relationships that facilitate the exchange of BRT across localities.

Chapter 5 examines the relationships between importing and exporting localities. It investigates the influence of municipal politics that enable and/or constrain decisions to adopt – that is the way in which those cities learning concurrently are connected and disconnected by these multifaceted processes of knowledge accumulation. Such debates deepen and widen the space through which policy flows, by proposing that local municipal relationships, both competitive and cooperative, shape the circulation process. Moreover, it exposes policy mobilities as more than a course through which energetic policy mobilizers introduce proven solutions to unsuspecting policymakers. Rather, policy ideas move through the terrain of local politics, which house prevailing international and domestic cooperative and competitive relations.