Problematising use conformity in spatial regulation: Religious diversity and mosques out of place in Northeast Italy

Abstract

This paper returns to a classic of planning and questions the inhibiting role that an approach to spatial regulation based on the requirement of use conformance has on the unfolding of (religious) diversity. The urgency to readdress the topic is due to the lack – among literature concerned with the urban effects of migration – of contributes questioning both the legitimacy of the categories used to order space and the very same process of ordering space through categories of uses. To fill this gap, the paper draws from critical legal geography and critical secular scholarships and, examining paradigmatic cases of “mosques out of place” in Veneto (in northeast Italy), shows that discourses over use conformity in spatial regulation need to be drastically re-examined. They, in fact, contribute to normalise sociocultural expectations about religion and space, resulting intrinsically discriminatory.