The territorial communication : The logic of building the concept and its historical development

Abstract

For nearly thirty years, the literature on the communication of territories has spread widely, particularly in French-speaking research. However, “territorial communication” remains deeply marked by a kind of dispersion (conceptual, geographical, etc.), as well as by a weak theoretical stabilization. How can such a contrast be explained, at a time when new concerns (citizenship, networks, identity crises, etc.) challenge the city and the local space and, with them, communication as a field of production of theory and modes? of public intervention? Based on a socio-historical study, the article revisits the sedimentation processes of this field (territorial communication), while outlining explanations for its theoretical "growing pains". A synthesis of the perspectives of theoretical renewal is also proposed, in the light of some recent works.