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AbstractLearning is one of the critical processes in enabling the international mobility of urban planning and policy ideas. A particularly effective form of learning in this context is an immersive, sensory approach we can describe as 'inhabiting'. This article illustrates the role that inhabiting plays in facilitating the mobility of the planning model of sustainable urbanism. To do so, it draws on research carried out in the industry of international private sector architects, planners and engineering consultants, sometimes called the Global Intelligence Corps (GIC). In the article, I illustrate how GICs use inhabiting, drawing on visual media and personal experience to encourage their clients to incorporate sustainable urban planning and design proposals into large urban development projects. These explorations demonstrate the value of research methodologies that focus on the everyday practices and social interactions through which people mobilize ideas.

This article examines the international travels of ideas about sustainable urban planning and design through a focus on private sector architecture, planning and engineering consultants. These consultants, who we refer to as the global intelligence corps (GIC), package up their expertise in urban sustainability as a marketable commodity, and apply it on projects around the world. In doing so, the global intelligence corps shape norms about what constitutes 'good' sustainable urban planning, and contribute to the development of an internationalised travelling model of sustainable urbanism. This article draws on a broad study of the industry (GIC) in sustainable urban planning and design, and two in-depth case studies of Swedish global intelligence corps firms working on Chinese Eco-city projects. Analysis of this material illustrates how the global intelligence corps's work shapes a traveling model of sustainable urbanism, and how this in turn creates and reinforces particular norms in urban planning practice.