Ricerc@Sapienza

When local territorial identity is understood as closely linked to sustainable, participatory and place-based development issues, it can become a dynamic, open, and plural social construction process, through which collectivities/groups choose the distinctive characteristics of the territory they inhabit, in order to develop shared views and common targets for policy implementation.

In the everyday language, as well as in the political and institutional one, territorial identity is an expression largely used, thanks to its strong evocative and performative power. Therefore, territorial identity is often treated as a taken-for-granted concept, or rather as ‘something’ that territories ‘have’ or ‘do not have’, for better or for worse.