ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how asymmetrical power relations at the international, national and local levels can influence planning, generating conflictive interests between land transformation and protection of natural interest sites. It demonstrates how this condition produces severe forms of environmental and social injustice, through the case study of the ‘Sughereta di Niscemi’. In order to explain by which mechanism these conflicts are formally resolved, Agamben’s concept concerning the ‘state of exception’ and its implications for planning is used. The state of exception mechanism shows the different modalities of suspension of norms and how planning, with its simplified administrative procedures, is at the same time the victim and itself an instrument of this manipulation mechanism. The case study exemplifies how the formal resolution of conflicts does not substantially improve the decision-making process, still leaving potential latent conflicts. In this context, planning plays an ambiguous and problematic role and contributes to maintaining inequality and injustice.
