"Both MSP [Ordenamento do Espaço Marítimo] and TSP [Ordenamento do Espaço Terrestre] can also be seen to be attempts at managing resource conflicts by using forms of technical rationality which support, rather than challenge the dominant economic interests in the respective fields - often the ones that have given rise to the need for interventions in the first place. For example, in the nineteenth century, Ebenezer Howard stressed how planning was a "peaceful path to real form" (...) and those on the left have highlighted how it can be used as means of neutralizing dissent and managing urban development within the logic of a capitalist system (...). Similarly, one could draw parallels with how MSP, born in an era where neo-liberalism rather than class-interests is the dominant organizing principle, has been justified within a discourse of ecological modernization, that facilitates reform of environmental governance while leaving many of the dominant unsustainable practices to continue. Indeed ecological concerns have led the way in putting MSP on the political agenda, with marine scientists being proeminent in shapin the early development of MSP. Interestingly, this disciplinary starting point differs markedly from that of TSP (which essential grew out of a movement for social reform) and this has had distinct implications for the development of debate around MSP, which has beem dominated by a rationalist paradigm focusing on the ecological health of marine areas and the epistemic discussion of appropriate management approaches".

Sue Kidd e Geraint Ellis, “From the Land to Sea and Back Again? Using Terrestrial Planning to Understand the Process of Marine Spatial Planning”, in Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, Vol. 14, No. 1, Taylor & Francis Online, March 2012, p. 52.