Is Local Planning Really `Local'? National Planning Context as a Determining Factor for Local Discourse

Local planning discourse is torn between three trends: the withdrawal of central governments from local issues, the rise of local expertise and powers, and the mobility of policies from one country to another. While these trends have an impact on local planning, their respective weight is left undiscussed. This paper analyses the textual discourse of 34 French and English local transport plans using textometry combined with the constitution of comparable lexical categories in two languages. Our results show that local discourses are shaped by the national context they belong to, and that no trace of transnational homogenisation is yet visible.