PUBLIC PARTICIPATION AND TERRITORY DEVELOPMENT

Public Participation and Territory Development. Using Localism to face Globalization.

di Nuno Bigotte Santos

Globalization is leading to a growing standardization of products, economic, social and even cultural processes (we could call it a “global acculturation” or, as I usually refer to it, the “globalizing standardization”). The only way to respond to these phenomena is, as a paradox, developing localism as a response to globalization, integrating it, in order to defend local traditions and culture, that is, the cultural and social identity of each population/ village. Therefore, the question of public participation is becoming much more important, as a mean to foster that localism. This dichotomy between Local vs. Global has been studied over the last decades by several authors. In this article I focus my attention on the contributions by Phillip Cooke, Robert Putnam, Patsy Healey and Doreen Massey.

Nuno Bigotte Santos has an Economics Degree and a Master Degree in Spatial Planning, Innovation and Development Policies. His academic studies and professional experience focus on the idea of Optimization: of processes and resources, but also of behaviours, in a company environment as well as in a territorial governance point of view.
Lately, he has been collaborating with the Northern Regional Authority of Portugal, analysing investment projects within the EU funds, but also he is a member of the Urbanism and Architecture Studies Centre in the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Porto, collaborating in different projects related with spatial planning.