Territorial Systems, Meta-Governance and Resilience

This paper proposes a reinterpretation of the concepts of risk, resili-ence, and sustainability through the analytical lens of the territorial ecosystem, understood as a complex and adaptive system in which economic, infrastructural, institutional, and social components dynamically interact. The existing literature reveals a persistent fragmentation among engineering, organizational, and gov-ernance approaches, which tend to treat these dimensions as separate domains, thereby limiting the understanding of systemic risks and territorial adaptive ca-pacities. Building on theories of territorial development, entrepreneurial ecosys-tems, and systems thinking, the paper develops a meta-level conceptual frame-work that integrates different levels of analysis—micro, meso, and macro—within a unified perspective. In this framework, resilience is not interpreted as a property of individual infrastructures or organizations, but as an emergent out-come of processes of coordination, collective learning, and value co-creation among heterogeneous actors. The main contribution lies in the introduction of a meta-governance perspective capable of overcoming analytical fragmentation and providing a theoretical foundation for territorial strategies oriented toward the management of systemic risks and long-term sustainability.