Study tours and inter-city policy learning: Mobilizing Bogotá’s transportation policies in Guadalajara

While modern urban planning has traditionally been shaped by policies and instruments from European and North American cities, in recent decades there has been an increase in South-South policy learning and a number of cities of the global South have emerged as alternative urban planning models. Yet, less is known about the practices through which urban policy actors in cities of the South learn from other Southern cities’ policies. This paper examines the case of Guadalajara, Mexico, where different local public and private actors introduced a new policy issue—sustainable transportation—in the local and state government agenda making extensive references to Bogotá, Colombia. Study tours are identified as key practices that facilitated the adoption of Bogotá’s transportation policies in Guadalajara. Using qualitative and ethnographic methods, I show that study tours were powerful instruments to promote policy change thanks to their capacity to: (1) educate the attention of influential local policy actors through hands-on “experiential learning”; (2) expand local coalitions through the building of trust and consensus around a policy model; and (3) mobilize public opinion through references to already existing policies. In doing so, I suggest that study tours should be conceptualized as both learning and governance instruments that a variety of actors can use to translate their shifting beliefs of how the city should be organized into public policy. The analysis of the actors that organized these tours also reveals the friction between local and transnational agendas shaping the apparent South-South circulations of Bogotá's transportation policies.