Salerno2009 (EN)

salerno 2009

This event will be the seventh annual international conference of Territorial intelligence. The first conference took place in 2002 in Besançon and was the starting point for setting up the European Network of Territorial Intelligence on the basis of the Catalyse Method users network that had progressively been build up in Europe since the 1990’s. Three conferences were organized before the beginning of the coordination action of the European Network of Territorial Intelligence, the caENTI, that was parlty funded by the 6th Research and Technological Framework programme of the European Union, in the thematics area «Citizens and governance in a knowledge-based society» from March 2006 to February 2009. Three international conferences took place in the frame of the caENTI in Alba Iulia (Romania, 2006), Huelva (Spain, 2007) and Besançon (France, 2008).

The Salerno Conference, from 4th to 7th November 2009, corresponds to a renewal of the ENTI network. With 250 participants from 22 different countries, the half of them who were not members of the caENTI and 30 of them coming from outside the European Union, the success of the Besançon conference highlighted the volition to make caENTI achievements durable and to develop them. To this end a project of network of excellence will be submitted at the occasion of the next call for proposals of the 7th Research and Technological Framework programme of the European Union. The Salerno conference will notably be an opportunity for discusing and enriching the research axis resulting from the caENTI : territorial information for sustainable development and fair territorial governance.

The Salerno Conference will present a new theme whose relevance has progressively increased during the last years : the place of culture in sustainable territorial development.

It promotes governance, decision making processes and practices valuing participation and partnership and research-action that contribute to fair and sustainable development of the territorial community.  To that end, territorial intelligence aims at providing tools made for, with and by territorial actors that allow them to elaborate, to manage and to evaluate partnership and participative projects of territories sustainable development.

Territorial intelligence, as it is defined by our research group, should also be able to design forms of promotion of the available resources development that, not only should not affect and should even increase the historical-environmental heritage, but should also conform to a culture which main objective is to increase public awareness of immaterial needs, apprehended as transnational ones.
One of these aspects, there is in the post-industrial societies, concerns the development concept. Indeed, we cannot define it in a unique way as a form of industrial production at a large scale, as it was done until a recent moment. This new concept, and here is the change, implies the convergence of the different forms of non material resources, and particularly of human resources. A culture that chooses non material values, especially concerning the artistic heritage and landscapes, feed the tourism sectors multiple dimensions.

Nevertheless, we do not consider economic development is useless and it is not necessary to keep the organizations that impacted on modernity, by making it integrate the importance of immaterial goods. However, we would like to underline the contribution of the immaterial resources to general development. In a scientific and formal way, we want to define the limit between sustainable development in a given socio-cultural area and the mere economic development.

The development of the cultural resources available on a territory should allow selecting and promoting those that meet a heterogeneous people needs, through the globalization various dimensions. At the same time, it allows the differences not becoming an obstacle to these needs affirmation, but on the contrary underlining a territory heritage.

Territorial intelligence should conciliate the post-material values with those of the industrial society culture, by supporting the territories resources development. This discipline recognizes the latter implicit qualities and uniqueness and makes their use attractive for the heterogeneous glocal societies.

This cultures kind, which main objective is to increase public awareness of development, should allow emancipating people from a vision only focused on available resources, by promoting the traditions that represent a territory peculiarities. Besides, if the consider the multiplicity of territories that make up a society, the latter should allow the expression of differences, which allow progressing.

As a consequence, action has a particular importance among the territorial intelligence competences. It favours a global development of the specific culture, which underlines the differences between the external and endogenous elements of a territory and does not give in to exclusion and separation temptations.

Territorial intelligence is an emerging and plurivocal concept aiming at meeting deep changes our planet and territories have to face since the middle of the 1975’s. These changes result from the conjunction of the transition from industrial economy to knowledge society, of fossil energies depletion and of the recognition of major ecological imbalances. They challenge at the same time social and territorial imbalances our planet has to face, the development model with an exclusive economic approach and the governance of territories.

Facing very diverse conceptions, ENTI did not try to define exhaustively territorial intelligence but it rather aimed at proposing a definition meeting these issues and taking into account other conceptions and neighbouring concepts to set the network objectives. Our conception differentiates principally territorial intelligence from economic intelligence and from the Anglo-Saxon concept of community development.

It does not limit to consider territory as a product, a market or a firm. I takes into account social, environmental and cultural dimensions nearby economic aspect. It includes profits and social, environmental and cultural costs in a project budget. It integrates cooperation as a competition regulator.

As community development, territorial intelligence « makes reference to voluntary changes in, by and for the community » [Sandu, 2005]. However, it is based on the use of information technologies, necessary to share information and to work cooperatively.

The conference will be the occasion to deepen this analysis and to confront it with other, including contradictory, approaches. It must allow positioning territorial intelligence near other close concepts as sustainable development or co-development. It will complete the territorial intelligence state of the art in terms of research and pratics on a worldwide scale.


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