To address the challenges of urbanisation, the legislator resorts mainly to urban planning, as a unilateral legal standard enabling to ensure the forecasting and the regulation of the occupation and allotment of land plots. Thus, such French laws as the “SRU” law and the “Grenelle II” law both devoted to urban planning the fundamental roles of social solidarity, of setting limits to urban sprawl and environment preservation, so as to circumscribe an urban development leading to social separation, and to limit public expenditures linked to the extension of networks and the spread of public facilities, as well as making possible sustainable development. In order to carry out this urban planning scheme endowed with a renewed and strengthened ambition, the legislator transfers the strategic planning, called the “SCOT”, to the “intercommunalité”, which could be defined as the putting together and sharing of resources of several towns and boroughs within the framework of a mutual local body, or inter communal entity, with the objective of achieving cost efficiency in the use of public funds. Furthermore, the legislator states its preference as to its scope of competence, for a system of regulated mandatory planning, the “PLU”. Indeed, urban planning and its resulting effects broadly exceed the boundaries and means of towns and local boroughs. So the legislator resorts to the implementation of these local joint policies or bodies called the “intercommunalité” or inter communal power or body to regroup them. This is enforced by the “Chevènement Law” of 1999 and the “RCT” of 2010 : both laws are applied to ensure the regrouping of single or local rural boroughs, towns, and big cities. However, the lawmaker has failed to create a genuine common power among towns and boroughs. Whether it relates to the scope of its area or the contents of its documents, the structure or body regrouping towns and boroughs is under the political domination of local councils, which transform this means of cooperation into a tool for their own purposes, and a place for conciliating their selfish interests. Yet, urban planning is a juridical standard whose efficiency requires taking independent political decisions. Consequently, town and borough cooperation can only result in consensual urban planning, quite far from legislative expectations. By hindering the emergence of a genuine inter communal power, the local town and borough powers impair the ambition of an efficient juridical regulation of urban development through planning. The success of the latter depends therefore on the setting up of a real inter communal power, or of its transfer to another public body endowed with a political power.
