Abstract

The paper's main theme are the geopolitical effects of administrative boundary's design at the urban and regional scale, in relation to spatial planning practices. To develop such a theme, the author refers to Foucault's research on devices, discipline and security in particular. On a historical background, he acknowledges that the disciplinary device is the base for architectural heterotopias such as the Panopticon, whereas the security device works behind modern urban planning, land use and zoning in particular. As a public policy, spatial planning can be regarded as the art of governing systems of social relations on a territorial basis, inasmuch it deals with the design of borders which regulate land uses. Planning is double-faceted, both excluding and including, and therefore oppressive and emancipatory. If it's impossible to overcome the dominating, coercive effects of planning such as zoning, in some cases is nonetheless worth practicing planning as something not too far from democracy.