How to Reclaim Mafia-Controlled Territory? The emancipatory experience in Southern Italy

This chapter aims to understand how emancipatory cooperation between stakeholders from public, private and voluntary sectors are built in planning contexts distorted by a significant influence of organized crime. Could government and insurgent publics stand together against the common 'enemy', Mafia, within a place-based regeneration process? Through an action-based case study undertaken in an urban area challenged by criminal organizations (the so-called Camorra system) in southern Italy, the chapter seeks to identify strategic means for weakening the influence of the Mafia and its supporting system on the 'dark side of institutional planning'.