Power in regulatory planning processes: searching for the third face of power

Planning regulations operate as an institutional arena where power is dispersed through the connections of socio-material assemblages. This chapter adopts a Foucauldian approach to power, supplemented with a focus on materiality. Inspired by Lukes (2005), it searches for the third face or dimension of power in planning regulatory dynamics, considering how power secures consent and maintains legitimacy. It examines self-regulation within the planning of urban development and unpacks how power is implicated in knowledge, looking at the warranting of knowledge as ‘evidence’ and the closing down of contestation over knowledge claims, often through recourse to black-boxing. It demonstrates the importance of classification and categorisation as well as the role of boundary objects, before emphasising the need to look for the silences. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the implications of this analysis for reform of regulatory processes, particularly where inequality in regulation outcomes is concerned.