Urban economists and planners have been debating the possibility of using innovative methods and tools in managing urban plans to increase their effectiveness. According to many theoretical contribution, a major step would lie in shifting from the use of authoritative tools toward market-based ones. The institution of a development rights market in order to implement urban plans represents a major attempt to transfer into the practical urban government such a theoretical perspective. The goal of the paper is to illustrate the major case studies of development rights markets in Italy and to explain several significant elements emerge from an analysis. First, markets for development rights do not replace the command and control tools traditionally used in planning. In reality, the success of the new markets seems to depend significantly on their integration with the latter. Furthermore, markets for development rights have not proven to be automatic devices led by an invisible hand: the visible hand of the administrations takes steps to establish market rules and to promote them, reducing transaction costs as much as possible.