Most research on urban planning, policy and development only considers legal practices and actors, and treats illegal ones as insignificant anomalies, unable to structurally affect the governance of urban space. However, this approach is inadequate for explaining urban governance in contexts (e.g. several countries in the Global South, the former Soviet bloc and Southern Europe) where illegal practices such as corruption and organized crime infiltration are widespread in many public and economic sectors. This paper addresses the role of illegal actors and practices in urban governance in the Italian context, using urban regime theory as the theoretical frame of reference. The research centres on the analysis of two case studies in the city of Rome (the In-between world investigation of a criminal network that had infiltrated the local administration and shaped several urban pol- icies, and the investigation of episodes of corruption related to the project for the new A.S. Roma soccer stadium). It shows the existence of two shades of ‘grey urban governance’: firstly, the presence of a dark urban regime, centred on a criminal organisation and parallel to the ‘regular’ one; secondly, the use of corruption as a customary practice with which real estate entrepreneurs influence municipal decisions. Overall, this research contributes to moving away from a rhetoric of ‘gentlemanly’ urban capitalism and politics, and suggests the need to revise several aspects of urban regime theory – as well as other approaches to urban governance dynamics in general – in order to incorporate the role of illegal actors and practices.

The paper deals with the transfer of development rights (TDR) in Italy. It presents a comparative analysis of the TDR programs implemented in the twelve capital cities of the Lombardy region in the past decade. After introducing the international debate on TDR and the distinctive features of the transfer of development rights in Italy, the essay analyses the specificity of TDR programs in Lombardy. The spread of this planning mechanism is stressed, and seven relevant characterising aspects of TDR programs in Lombardy are highlighted (with reference to: reasons for TDR adoption, designation of sending and receiving areas, allocation rate, destiny of sending areas, mandatory nature of the transfer, market of development rights and role of the public authority). The analysis identifies internal factors (e.g. related to the design of the program) and external factors (e.g. exogenous to the program, such as the condition of the real estate market) for the success of the transfer of development rights in the Lombardy case. It allows us also to enrich (and partially correct) the international debate on the TDR, by considering the diffusion of this planning tool in Italy and its potential.