Region, regionalization and local development

This contribution aims to stimulate a critical reflection about local development, with particular attention to the role of regionalization practices in the construction of territorial identity processes. It is believed that the identification of specific areas is essential in public policies that aim to promote local specificities, especially in reference to strong areas of excellent territorial capital, not properly valued. This is the case of the Upper Aniene Valley, the study area of my PhD research project, for which there is no shared regionalization, neither from the scientific world, nor from the political-administrative one, and in which the construction of a shared territorial identity is hindered by the absence of training and information models that allow the people to know the territory where they live or work. In this contribution, after highlighting (in the introduction) the importance of regionalization processes in the social and political construction of space, the case study will be presented, underlining the difficulties encountered during research and in the methodology that is intended to be applied in the regionalization of the Aniene Valley. It is believed that this operation is preliminary to any attempt to intervene in the territory.