With aging populations and reactionary politics in the Global North, the front lines of global urbanization will increasingly shift to the Global South.

Every country will experience different phases of development. Rapid urbanization will not stay forever for any country. Architecture and planning education should not just respond to urbanization, but instead should incorporate the changes, and identify what the needs are and how we should respond to them. As our student body becomes more diverse, this means we need to understand more about our students. Where do they come from? What do they want to do after graduation? It may also mean that we need to promote more exchanges of idea for people who conduct research in different contexts to see what we can learn from each other and why the knowledge we produced in one country might be useful to other countries.  

This question has multiple components: 

(a) aging populations.  We don't do a good job planning throughout the lifecycle, for kids, for the elderly.   (We have no planning courses on these topics, but often assume that our unitary solutions work for all age groups, or to be precise, we often plan for the age 16-64 cohort.  
(b) reactionary politics:  we may no longer take democracy and a progressive social welfare state for granted -- the foundation of much of traditional planning.  Planning may require new forms of politics, funding, legitimacy.
(c) yes, regardless of (a) and (b), most urban growth will happen elsewhere in the world.  This already triggers a mismatch between the life experiences of our itnernational students (who often come from megacities) and their immediate geographic context of studying at UM (modest-sized Ann Arbor, shrinking Detroit).  Yes, more sustained partnerships with programs in other countries might be one step.

A nuance consideration of the UrbArch disciplinary agency engaging disparate trends of global urbanization remains relevant... Both Global North and Global South represent solid terrains for us to engage, with unique histories worth learning about, urgent needs to be addressed, and radically different imaginations about the future...  

Agree with Scott that this "Idea" has many parts on it, all worth considering... And with Lan: our own students are (can be) main instigators, a source of knowledge and potential drivers to more engaged global partnerships that go beyond established worldwide organizations, government, and local academic institutions and include activists, non-profits and others resisting "single official narratives."