Planning for sustainable territorial development in Latin America and the Caribbean

Territory is understood as a human community with a sense of belonging, future and ownership of a physical, natural or artificial space. It is a social construct nourished by culture, politics, technology and infrastructure, which serves to address the challenges of development, sustainability and equality. It is within this complex construct that territorial development policies in the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean need to be examined and improved, in order to reduce inequalities and build capacities. This work gauges the state of the art and examines the variety and breadth of policy interest in the territorial sphere. The outcome indicates that, rather than policies, the appropriate term is a cluster or family of territorial development policies. In practice, however, this family lacks the desirable cohesion and coordination, and thus needs to be consolidated into an ecosystem. A model for analysis —Territorial PlanBarometer— is presented as a first step towards achieving this.