CONTENTS

J. Duhok Univ., Vol. 14, No.1 (Pure and Eng. Sciences), Pp 1-8, 2011
GOVERNING THE TERRITORY IN A PHASE OF GLOBALIZATION:
THE ISSUE OF THE TERRITORIAL PLANNING
AND THE LOCAL DEVELOPMENT
MAJED ALI KAREEM
Urban & Regional Planning, University of Venice-Italy
(Received: January 22, 2009; Accepted for publication: November 28, 2010)
ABSTRACT
One of the consequences of the present of the financial, communicative and decisional nets globalization is to make
ineffective the traditional instruments for the direct control of the territory by the public authorities. The territories
are nowadays structured in over-regional and over-national nets and fluxes which tend to establish direct relations
with the single local systems (i.e., towns, districts, regions, tourist resorts, etc).
In this complex situation, the territorial planning shall thus and in first place propose itself as governance, that is
to say as governing negotial process for the cooperative and conflictual interactions between subjects which are
capable, for various reasons, to act on the territory and transform it.
The scope of this research is to investigate on the role of the territorial planning in relation with two relational
aspects: global and local. The target is that to locate a methodological approach able to have an “open” view to the
territorial phenomenon in a globalized context; to define the territorial planning’s role, procedures and instruments.
T
PROBLEM DEFINITION
he territory becomes ever more
fragmented in parts, each one of which
tends to become a “junction” of over-local
networks and, therefore, to follow different
development routes according to the long
distance relation system to which it belongs. At
the same time each one of these subjects
depends ever less from those relations of
physical proximity with the contiguous
territories, which were the territorial planning’s
existence and operative justification. The
proximity relations continue, anyway, to be
important also and above all in order to optimize
the long distance local relations; but just for this
reason they risk to be subordinate to an
exogenous rationality which tend to impose
itself as the territorial organization’s principle
also at a local level.
In order to plan rationally a territory it should
be necessary to check this nets body which
however, for its trans-national nature, today is
not directly controllable by any public authority.
On the other end neither these “long nets” nor
the organizations which operates them can
directly control the territories which they use as
“anchorages” for their junctions and as physical
paths of their fluxes. They interact with the
territories and try to obtain “competitive
advantages” through a series of negotiations
with those private and public subjects who, for
various reasons, operate or have competences on
a local level.
WHAT ROLE FOR THE
TERRITORIAL PLAN?
The role of the “Territorial Plan” 1 today and
in the next future, must be placed in the local
development context 2 . It has to take into
account, above all, the growing role of the
municipalities-being the base level of the
territory governance – and of the pluralities of
the institutions involved by the growing
environmental problems’s expansion and
complexity, but also by the ever major difficulty
to govern the local effects (Perulli, P., 2000), of
decisions taken elsewhere and which are taken
basing on pure sectorial rationalities. Its role
seems to be usefully subdivisible in three main
directions: knowledge and evaluation, strategic
orientation and netting, in being conflicts’
adjustment.
a) A first function concerns the cognitive and
evaluation support which the territorial plan can
supply to all the subjects, capable, for various
reasons, to affect the territorial and urban
conditions and dynamics (Mazza L., 1997).
This function is important locally, not only the
local authonomies couldn’t be efficaciously
excercised unless on the base of an adequate
knowledge of the reality into which they are
asked to weigh heavily (and often such a
knowledge is precluded to the Municipalities for
territorial dimensions and technical, professional
and administrative resources). In general, there
could be not an effective dialogue between the
various interested subjects unless it would be on
the base of data and objective ties’ common
1