Urban Planning Doesn’t Exist: An Essay on Territorial Governance (English Edition)
Roberto Deriu has been repeating it for years, and every time he meets with the same half smile. It is not a provocation: it is a statement of fact. Urban planning does not exist as an autonomous science, because every plan merely gives form to decisions taken elsewhere — in the economy, in demography, in politics. It does not exist as an effective power, because plans always come after and, without consent, remain paper. Only one thing exists: bargaining. What exists is planning politics — that is, negotiation — not urban planning.
From this blunt thesis begins a journey across the centuries: the grid of the Greeks, when society stood still and the design could coincide with the city; the corrective utopia and the total plan of the twentieth century; the revolt of the sidewalk and the contemporary dissolution of the discipline. Down to the Italian laws, which prove by way of legislation — one derogation after another, one agreement after another — what history recounts. An appendix examines the case the author knows from the inside: Sardinia, the island whose special statute has made planning law an endemic species of its own.
In the end there remains what was there at the beginning, finally recognized: the politics that negotiates. Not a surrender, but the way a community decides for itself when no one can prevail alone. And in the governance of territory no one can prevail alone, ever.
An essay for administrators, mayors, planners curious or sceptical, students, and readers of civic and political nonfiction. With an annotated bibliography and an index of names.
Roberto Deriu is a politician, journalist and writer. His books include La democrazia rapita (1998), Scacco matto (2011), La pantera di Bultei (2018), Vincere in politica con la trattativa (2024), and Il principe della Repubblica (2026).
Where to find the book:
Do you want to read Urban Planning Doesn’t Exist: An Essay on Territorial Governancete? You can purchase the ePub version online:
There’s also an Italian version; you can find it here!
Press and reviews
Reviews
A review of the English edition of Deriu’s essay, which holds that urban planning is not an autonomous science but depends on economics, demography and politics. The reviewer links the argument to the planning history of Newcastle and to recent British planning reforms, noting that the book does not mention Newcastle.
Essays by Roberto Deriu
Deriu argues that planning decisions are often reduced to a check of compliance, leaving open the question of what the territory actually gains. He uses the Sardinian coastal strips as an example, draws on cases from the UK, the US and Ireland, and concludes that territorial negotiations should be recognised and governed in public by identifiable people.
A guest editorial in which Deriu recalls childhood summers at Cala Liberotto (Orosei) and the gradual sale of the land to private owners. He notes that the plans on paper were circumvented by houses, amnesties and roads, and concludes that plans remain necessary but are not enough without institutions strong enough to oversee the process.
Deriu argues that urban planning does not exist as an autonomous science, because choices about where and how to build derive from economic dynamics and power relations. He proposes a few non-negotiable ecological rules, funded strategic projects, and public, transparent negotiation in place of twenty-year general plans.
Deriu argues that urban planning exists neither as an autonomous science nor as an effective power, because plans arrive after the choices on economics, demography and politics. He stresses that the point is not to abolish plans and rules, but to recognise that the discipline alone does not govern the territory.
Responses and debate
Seltzer’s response to Deriu’s Common Edge essay: in his view planning is already, in practice, a negotiation between private interests and public bodies. He criticises the use of dated sources and rejects the proposals to replace twenty-year plans with funded strategic projects and to make the negotiating table public.