The territorial economy: a general approach in order to understand and deal with globalization

Today many contributions are dedicated to the role of industrial districts, clusters and other such networks in local economic development, or to local innovation dynamics (innovative milieus, technopoles, regional innovation systems, learning regions and so on). In our opinion, the crucial question at present no longer consists of providing new notions and concepts. We believe that it is time to develop a more ambitious, theoryoriented research programme that aims to take space and time in socioeconomic theory fully into account. The objective of this chapter is to give a first account of what we believe to be the upcoming issues and theoretical questions in research about territorial economic dynamics. Indeed, a better understanding of the territorial economy is central to greater understanding of the roles that networks play in local economic development processes.