ABSTRACT
Even if his morphological suggestions remain, Lefebvre’s romantic utopia was ruined by the changes in political and social culture that accompanied the rise to dominance of neoliberalism. The fading away of a shared idea of citizenship also meant the fading away of a civic sense that made it possible to share projects and interventions in the collective interest that are to be realised through spatial governance. To understand this crisis, it is worth tracing its roots back to the contradiction brought about by the process of secularisation of the state, and briefly reviewing the debate on ideas of regulation, public interest, and the common good that lie at the heart of spatial governance policies and have gradually been called into question.
