Different world views and philosophies in defining development problems and their solutions derive currently from different disciplines. They refer in many respects to the principle of cause-effect as a fundamental relationship between phenomena. The history of differing values and attitudes presented in management and design indicates the importance of this relationship. This sort of knowledge and some of the values and attitudes needed by built environment professionals can be explored by the Endogenous Development Model and its associated internal paradigms of production-process and supply-demand relationships. The first is responsible for the evolution of thought in a diachronous space-time dimension and the second causes the generation of typologies created in a synchronous three-dimensional space. Particular emphasis is placed on the meaning of development in the context of endogenous people-centred development. The paper addresses the fact that the means of production and the associated supply-demand mechanism are generated in the west. Indeed, for some today, what is seen as the historical process of “Westernization” may well be rejected outright as a goal for developing countries.
