Rural Infrastructure: Foundational DNA or Outcome of Development? Towards a Circular and Inclusive Framework for Sustainable Territorial Investment

Abstract

This paper explores the proposition that rural infrastructures are not the outcomes of development, but rather its genetic material. Drawing on the principles of the circular economy, it advances a universal theoretical framework in which infrastructures are conceived as living systems embedded within the ecological, social, and economic cycles of a given territory. The article demonstrates that circularity and endogeneity constitute the fundamental conditions for sustainable, reproducible, and sovereign development.