What Policy for Interconnected Territories? Conclusions and Openings

The main argument of the whole book is that regions, however their functional boundaries are defined, grow with a virtuous process if the public and private agents of their territory maintain an equilibrated set of connections both inside and outside the region, and can hence be defined as interconnected territories. Some recent literature has defined the process by which the growth of regional territories is shaped not only by global forces but by their internal structure and governance, as ‘glocalism’ (e.g. Swyngedouw 2000). Virtuous regions are in fact characterized by strong interconnections within the territory, with other territories, and also on the global scale.