Urban Law In/Theory

In a time such as this, when the ‘promises of [Western] modernity have become problems for which there seem to be no solutions at all’31 in the name of civilisation, development and progress, there is an urgent need for new theoretical and conceptual frames that can rescue the world from this epistemological purgatory and abyss. In writing about urban law, therefore, it is imperative to bring together some of the critical concepts that demonstrate the relationship between law and spatial planning. These include the lawscape; the production of space; the right to the city; modernity/coloniality; and abyssal thinking. These notions stem primarily from the disciplines of law, urban planning and decolonial theory. When read contrapuntally, they provide a sound philosophical scaffolding necessary for the analysis of the equally complex lawscape.32 What emerges from a close reading of the concepts is that law and spatial planning practices and processes are constitutive and reflective of specific power relations within a given city, state or society. In fact, both law and spatial planning reflect the state’s efforts to establish and regulate societal order within a given society.