The role of Planning Support Systems in national policy transfer and policy translation in secondary cities

Rwanda has developed a National Urbanization Policy (NUP) that identifies six secondary citieswhere efforts to promote urbanization and economic growth should focus. To implement it, a Spatial Development Framework (SDF) was developed, that makes use of Planning Support Systems (PSS) to communicate the goals to the local level. PSS present opportunities for stakeholders to understand and translate national policies to their local planning contexts. This paper questions how the SDF’s PSS tools can be used in the NUP’s transfer and translation to the local level. It focuses on potential users of the SDF. Results suggest that SDF’s PSS tools and outcomes can promote better spatial understanding, and communicate planning needs, strengthening regional competition andeconomic development among the secondary cities and in line with NUP. We conclude that the national government can use vertical transfer and horizontal translation to transfer the SDF’S PSS tools and outcomes to secondary cities.