The theme of that section was about impact of history/tradition on the (suboptimal) ways countries do construction, including "X country tends to learn from Y c

The theme of that section was about impact of history/tradition on the (suboptimal) ways countries do construction, including "X country tends to learn from Y country's approach even if the realities of X and Y are very different." I think the point was North Africa learns from France even though the situations are vastly different. All of Asia following Japan's approach was another example.