It is highly appropriate that some of the finest minds in the planning field-Raymond Vernon, William Alonso, Anthony Downs, and Peter Hall-should be invited to honor Lloyd Rodwin with discussions of national and international forces shaping cities of the future. Few individuals have done more to bring an international perspective to urban and regional planning than Lloyd Rod- win. He created MIT’s Special Program in Urban and Regional Studies (SPURS), which continues to provide a model for cross-cultural collaboration in planning. He pioneered in focusing on the tricky problems of designing new cities to open up lagging regions or channel urban growth. He embarked upon path-breaking comparative studies of both national urbanization policies and explo- rations of de-industrialization in various parts of the world.