rban planning has often been defined as a public policy aimed at regulating land use in urban space through the orderly disposition of land, resources, facilities and services. From this point of view, planners and planning authorities regulate the distribution of different land uses by drawing administrative "borders" to distinguish between the functions of different areas. In contemporary theoretical discourse, however, urban processes and spatial dynamics are perceived as tangible realities

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... haped by, and in turn shaping, wider political discourses. 1 Indeed, recent research acknowledges the constraints of social structures and the power of interest groups in shaping the information-based infrastructure within which planning outcomes are often determined. 2 The process of planning, though commonly represented as "technocratic" or "neutral," is thus more properly understood as a central tool with which dominant economic, social or ethnic groups work to preserve their dominance of urban space. 3 In these ongoing struggles over exclusion and inclusion, planning and zoning enable the creation and preservation of economic or social partitions along the involuntary lines of status and power. 4