SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT MANAGEMENT AND ARTICULATION OF TERRITORIAL SCALES

MANAGEMENT DU DÉVELOPPEMENT DURABLE ET ARTICULATION DES ÉCHELLES TERRITORIALES

Michel Casteigts ()
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Michel Casteigts: CREG - Centre de recherche et d'études en gestion - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour

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Abstract: A sustainable development strategy requires the permanent organization of cross-arbitration between market and non-market activities, between individual goods and public goods, between economic, social and environmental fields. These systemic interactions necessarily take place in complex territorial frameworks, on a multiplicity of scales. The problem of scales is inextricably linked to the territorial dimension of sustainable development. Economics has for a long time abandoned spatial reflection and therefore the notion of territorial scale of processes. Economists have gradually grown accustomed to reasoning in a way that is less and less spatialized. This does not stand the test of facts. A perfectly localized economic decision - whether to close a factory or not close it, whether to lay off or not - is linked to factors that play out on a multitude of scales, from the functioning of the local labor market to the world evolution of the prices of currencies. Even remaining within a purely economic approach, the question of territorial scales must imperatively be taken into account by economic theory. If we leave the economic field to take into account environmental phenomena and social dynamics, the game of territorial scales becomes more and more complex. This complexity is linked to the fact that we have scales of several natures: that of phenomena, that of processes and that of actions; for the same object, the scale of processes can be different from that of phenomena, itself different from that of actions. Beyond the spatial scales, it is also necessary to take into account the temporal scales. In these conditions, how can sustainable development be managed, that is to say, at the same time designing, organizing and piloting collective actions? This communication highlights the place of cognitive processes in the coordination of sustainable development strategies. A collective approach to sustainable development can only succeed if all of the stakeholders concerned share a certain number of implicit conventions, of common representations which will rationalize their behavior, even if they do not have a perfect knowledge of the all parameters.

Keywords: theory of conventions; territorial scale; sustainable development; théorie des conventions; échelle territoriale; développement durable (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-06-25
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-02130391v1
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Published in COLLOQUE DEVELOPPEMENT DURABLE ET TERRITOIRE, Jun 2004, Chateauroux, France

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-02130391

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