El planeamiento urbano como dispositivo

The article presents urban planning, and specifically the General Plans of Urban Planning, as devices, in the sense of Michael Foucault. A device is formed by a set of practices, knowledge, institutions, regulations and even architectures, in which produces a manipulation of forces. From this point of view, planning emerges as the object of analysis of a given society, in a particular historical, geographical and cultural context. Through the study of the legends of different general plans of the city of Malaga, considered as a laboratory for experimentation thanks to the intense urban and economic development suffered in the XX and XXI centuries, it is shown as the legends of the plans, as the join of the normative determinations and the spatialization that is concrete in the plans, suppose an optimal reflection of the operation of this device. The aim of this analysis, for architects who feel committed to their time, is to learn the mechanism of operation of the device to acquire the effective ability to operate on it.