Situating Social Innovation in Territorial Development: A Reflection from the Italian Context

Social innovation is increasingly considered a relevant theme for territorial development policy, in a context of socio-economic polarizations that interest the large majority of cities and regions of the European and Italian context. Social-innovation based territorial development approaches can be considered as the key to sustain bottom-up dynamics in setting problems, experiment projects and systematize solutions to complex social issues. The paper aims to discuss theoretical visions and practical examples on how social innovation-based methodologies are able to promote territorial development processes, highlighting limits and opportunities of fostering these processes in marginal territorial settings.