Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 School of Urban Planning, University of Tehran
2 University of Tehran
Abstract
A substantial body of informality literature has emphasized the pivotal role of state power in suspending the law. These studies focus on the idea of informality from above, portraying the state as a unified entity with significant control over society and viewing law as an objective and fixed concept that forms the basis of the state's bureaucratic practices. More recently, there has been a shift to expand the concept of power beyond the state and to challenge the idea of law as purely objective and neutral. According to this growing de-centered approach to informality, this article examines dynamic interconnections between law and power to shed light on the social and practical construction of law as a fundamentally indeterminate concept in urban governance, where a multitude of networked actors, both inside and outside the government, largely shape processes and outcomes. Relying on the Foucauldian Reading of Power relations and truth discourses, this article outlines how power relations can shape legality discourses in the context of controversial decision-making in urban planning. In this sense, through a Foucauldian discourse analysis of acquired rights in the revision of the Urban Renewal project in Samen District, the article provides an empirically grounded discussion that renders the power/law nexus visible. The data originated from 15 narrative in-depth interviews, 200 official documents (including planning documents, official correspondence, approvals, and reports of official meetings), as well as 130 unofficial documents (including press reports of official interviews, official meetings, official speeches, reports of official websites of the institutions). The analysis shows that the power struggles within and beyond the state produce various discourses of (il)legality, which provide different answers to critical questions such as who is entitled to interpret the acquired rights, what the definition of the acquired rights is, and Whose interest the acquired rights respond to?. As a result of the long-lasting disputes among four discourses on the acquired rights (extralegal, extended, reconciliatory, argumentative), the vast deregulation that was informally adopted to manage project investment was finally authorized in formal urban governance. The findings of this study demonstrate that informality is not necessarily the ungovernable realm outside of formal planning. This study shows that power dynamics create competing discursive claims of legality, which justify the subject positions who have the authority to determine what is legal, legitimize the elaboration of the notion of the law, and rationalize legal decisions based on serving the public interest or not. Rather than following established bureaucratic processes based on written law, these competing discursive claims of legality shape formal decision-making. In these processes, power reshapes the legal notion of law and redefines formality/informality boundaries within urban planning and governance. This complex interplay of power and law demonstrates that informality, often viewed as a violation of urban planning laws, can gradually become a regular part of urban planning. This process which can be named "informality from within formal urban planning" challenges the formality/informality binary that equates planning with law and informality with the absence of law.
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