Territorial Governance: A Bibliometric Analysis

Territorial governance has been given different definitions across the academic spectrum; however, it is considered a unit of analysis, an essential subject of study for f regional economic development strategies. Not in vain has it become a field of interest for social scientists in the last few years. The purpose of this research is to analyze the body of literature developed around territorial governance, identifying its growth over time, the countries more academically interest in it, the most relevant authors, fundamental characteristics of territorial governance as described per cluster, recurring terms, and future research lines. To meet this study's objective, we applied a bibliometric analysis to the literature, for which 276 documents retrieved from the Web of Science were examined. The results suggest that the field of territorial governance has grown during the last six years, and Brazil, a Latin American country, is among the five regions with the highest production on the subject. It is observed that the topics of most significant interest have revolved around how territorial governance is related to the development of the territory and territorial policy. Future research should be aimed at integrating water resources management and land use planning in order to promote a sustainable territorial future, i.e., territorial sustainability.