Potts and Milz show that digitalisation cannot be explained adequately through software availability, cost or technical competence. Comparing professional documents and interviews with planners in Australia, Great Britain and the United States, they identify workplace and professional culture as a variable shaping what technologies are adopted, how they are justified and what planners expect them to accomplish. The methodological operation is comparative cultural diagnosis: similar technological capacities are read through different institutional narratives of efficiency, competitiveness, modernisation, professional autonomy and public service. This makes technology adoption a planning-culture phenomenon rather than a neutral diffusion curve. Digital champions, organisational routines and professional bodies become mechanisms through which technological expectations are normalised or resisted. The paper bridges comparative planning, professional sociology and digital governance. For the shared nexus, it demonstrates that the pre-formal informational environment is culturally produced. A dataset, model or platform acquires authority only within a professional ecology that recognises its relevance. Digital planning therefore changes not simply the speed of evidence processing but the repertoire of objects that can appear persuasive before a plan is formally stabilised.
URBANISM MEETS ART