Territorial Brand in Regional Development: Interdisciplinary Discussions

Abstract

Almost half of the world’s countries, including cities, have strategically adopted the territorial brand. This essay proposes an interdisciplinary reflection on the relationship between territorial brands and territorial and regional development theories. It discusses how the brand relates to the territory, making it a social actor mediated by a distinctive signal, the territorial brand. The intersection between the concepts of territory and brand reveals the legitimation strategies of social actors in producing a collective space delimited by power relations. Beyond the economic and tourist spheres, this context brings new debates to politics, theory, and social sciences in interdisciplinary regional development.

Keywords

• regional development
• territorial brand
• cultural studies
• place branding
• interdisciplinarity
• territory