The pursuit of development has increasingly prioritized sustainability. Sustainable approaches to development and adopting people’s well-being as a main goal have substantial implications for the competitiveness of territories. When viewed through a nature lens, sustainability maintains a close connection with circular economy. If sustainability is the paradigm to which the world needs to commit, businesses, policy makers and people have to deal with the difficulties and uncertainties arising from those requirements and other severe phenomena, like international armed conflicts and pandemic crises. By using case studies, this book addresses territorial bottlenecks and grapples with social and developmental challenges. The book intends to function as a practical guide for policymakers and practitioners, providing them with the knowledge necessary to adopt and implement sustainable development strategies. It advocates the implementation of socially inclusive policies and the adoption of innovative governance models able to safeguard democratic principles while enhancing the efficacy of decision-making processes.

Currently the writing on the subject is limited and comprises, for the most part, guidance documents and completed assessments.

Thinking about development and the environment simultaneously is one of the biggest scientific and societal challenges of the 21st century. Understanding the interactions between biophysical systems and human activities in an era of global change requires overcoming disciplinary divides and opening up new epistemological perspectives. This book explores these challenges using a territorial lens. Combining various scales of analyses (from global to local) and contexts (both urban and rural) in the North and in the South, it analyzes the relationships between environment and development through a variety of geographical objects (i.e. cities, rural and agricultural areas, coastlines, watershed), themes (i.e. ecological transitions, food, energy, transport, agriculture, mining activities) and methodologies (i.e. qualitative and quantitative approaches, modeling, in situ measurements). By engaging in a dialogue between social science and natural science disciplines, within different fields and with a variety of forms of knowledge production, this book provides essential information for understanding and reading the complexity of a globalized world. This book is targeted at academics and students in social sciences and at stakeholders in the field of territorial and environmental management.

Delivering a global perspective, Clusters in Times of Uncertainty follows the transformation of clusters in a world defined by digital collaboration and green economies. In this innovative book, contributors deconstruct and compare examples from Japan and Europe to explore the opportunities and challenges that clusters present in our modern age.