Moroni’s intervention recasts land-use regulation through a distinction between teleocratic and nomocratic orders. Teleocracy treats planning as purposive steering toward collectively selected spatial outcomes; nomocracy privileges general, impersonal rules that constrain action without prescribing a specific end-state. The iconic move is therefore not a rejection of regulation but a shift from plan-led outcome control to rule-based coordination. Methodologically, the article operates by contrasting two meta-theories of public regulation and tracing their consequences for planning practice, particularly the status of plans, codes and discretionary decision-making. Its theoretical contribution lies in separating the legitimacy of rules from the desirability of specific spatial results, thereby exposing the implicit political theory embedded in apparently technical planning instruments. The bridge to urban morphology is precise: if planning rules are not simply commands aimed at predetermined forms, then morphology must be understood as an emergent effect of interacting permissions, prohibitions and private decisions rather than as the direct expression of a public design intention.
URBANISM MEETS ART