The present work is comprised of a series of studies linked to territorial development as a research topic. In principle, the interest is directed to the study of public policies for territorial development, new strategies within the framework of a new development paradigm, such as the capacity for innovation and entrepreneurship of regions and localities to face structural problems of regional inequality and thus improve the cohesion of these territorial spaces. On the other hand, certain recent social phenomena in Uruguay, such as municipalization and its correlation with the formal instances created within the framework of political decentralization processes that give rise to new emerging spaces for citizen participation, are discussed. Likewise, the issue of the conceptualization of development is debated, questioning the old definition linked to economic growth, with the irruption of the new way of contemplating development by the UNDP, such as the economist Amartya Sen, with his theoretical-methodological contributions regarding the alternative paradigm of human development, within the framework of globalization and asymmetrical character.