Understanding project mobility: the movement of King’s Cross to Brussels and Johannesburg

This paper builds on policy mobility research to question how loosely deployed references to specific models or sites reveal how tacit and explicit knowledge are required to effectively replicate urban ideas in new places. Departing from existing analysis of policies and the public sector, we use policy mobility framing to critically engage with the strategies of the private sector. We analyse King’s Cross’ arrival in two large-scale redevelopments: Brussels’ Tour and Taxis and Johannesburg’s Modderfontein, questioning how it was referred to, the success of its deployment and the politics of urban learning. We draw three main conclusions: first, the comparison demonstrates private sector agency in their ability to shape the way expert knowledge arrives. Second, we argue that private sector actors require locally embedded practices and tacit knowledge to leverage international points of reference in their projects. Third, in placing the analytical gaze from the perspective of the project ‘arriving’ and adopting a specifically comparative approach, we reveal the myriad of possibilities developers and consultants face and the politics of what they pick from each. Theoretically, these conclusions draw from economic geography’s politics of learning and mobility research to demonstrate the benefit of analysis that traces a project, rather an idea or a policy, and from ‘arriving at’ and the subsequent assembling of different project components