ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between two seemingly unrelated concepts of
resilient territories and territorial cohesion. One thing that both have in common is ambiguity.
Despite, or probably because of, their elasticity both have travelled far and fast and risked becoming
buzzwords, or empty signifiers that can be filledwithmultiple and conflicting agendas. I will unpack
these two concepts by tracing their origins, evolution, multiple meanings and the values that have
been inscribed on them. My aim is to demonstrate that although territorial cohesion and resilience
have different origins, they share a similar destination. Irrespective of their different genealogies and
ideological associations, there is a great deal of overlap in their appropriation by the neoliberal
mentalities, policies and practices. To substantiate this proposition, I draw on previous work
notably, Davoudi (2005, 2007, 2012, 2016) and Davoudi and Madanipour (2015). The chapter is
structured under four sections. After this introduction, the second section unpacks the con-
cept of territorial cohesion and discusses its co-option into neoliberal agendas. The third
section covers similar ground in relation to resilience. The final section concludes the chapter.
Territorial cohesion has become a pertinent concept in the European policy and spatial planning
discourse. Being translated from the French Cohesion Territoire, while leaving behind its wider
systems of meaning, it created a great deal of ambiguity and confusion and, as a result, generated
a growing body of literature attempting to define the concept and explore its applications in
practice (Faludi, 2004; Town Planning Review, 2005; Davoudi, 2005; Faludi, 2007; Kovacs et al.,
2013). While the term itself was introduced into the European spatial planning discourse in the
1990s, the values and rationalities that underpin it have a longer history and are rooted in the
social democratic ideals of the so-called European Social Model. Indeed, as I will discuss below,
territorial cohesion can be seen as the spatial manifestation of the European model. This is a
Weberian ideal type model that closely resembles the post-war welfare state in the United
Kingdom and the NewDeal in the United States. It has been referred to by other names such as,
the ‘polder model’ (by Bill Clinton, the former US President), the stakeholder model, the
‘Rhineland model’ (by Michel Albert, former director of the French planning agency) and
simply the European model (Bolkestein, 1999). All these refer to a new mode of governance
that emerged in many Western societies after the Second World War, namely welfarism
(Davoudi and Madanipour, 2015, p. 84). In contrast to the classical liberalism of the late
nineteenth century, the welfare state rejected the idea that there exists a necessary link between
liberty and the private-property-based market; instead, it called for the creation of a ‘social
market economy’ (Lemke, 2010, p. 192) in which the market is not a separate, autonomous
domain but rather an integral part of the social relations and has to be regulated and maintained
through government intervention.
