Embedding illegality, or when the illegal becomes licit: Planning cases and urban transformations in Rome

This contribution problematizes the relationship between illegality and illicitness in planning theory and policy perspectives. Examples are provided, drawn from research activity in Rome and its spatial transformations as related to planning, politics and the economy. Different kinds of behaviors and practices are scrutinized, as they develop within a socio-economic and cultural context of ‘blurred legality’, where informality also plays a role. Their interest resides in that, despite the fact that some of them could be interpreted as ‘simply’ illegal, since they unquestionably break rules, they are not overall perceived as despicable. In a theoretical sense, the more the boundary between illegal and licit converges, the more this problem asks to be explicated