This paper aims at highlighting the need for reviewing the contents and targets of the public policy relating to territory and deeply rectifying the approaches developed while such policy would have been identified with the aim to obtain socio-economic convergence among regions and it could have been realised directly by the central government through its budgetary and legislative tools.
The new set of values and instruments available has to guide the academic discussion toward the elaboration of an updated viewpoint within which integrate the various demands of management and physical transformation associated to the contemporary territories. With the aim to offer a contribution for opening up this discussion, the paper identifies the challenges which a public policy relating to territory would face, looks at both the ideas emerged from the French debate on the role of the regions and the European concept of territorial cohesion, and finally analyses the general feature of a new public policy relating to territory proposing some tools capable to shape a renewed action for the cohesion between territories.