Endogenous resources, economic profile and socio-economic issues are the criteria that
define the development level and the identity features of a territorial unit. The territorial
units that organize the country, in political and administrative terms – parishes and
counties –, have a hierarquical structure, which initially reflected the organization of
productive activities as well as the tradition State organization. The success of
development policies addressed to territorial agglomerates depends on its homogeneity
and of their territorial units. Facing to this the clustering of territorial areas can be stated
as a districting multi-criteria problem. Thus, this paper aims to propose a framework for
obtaining homogenous territorial clusters based on a Pareto frontier that includes multicriteria
related to the territorial endogenous resources, economic profile and sociocultural
features. This framework is developed in two phases. First, the criteria
correlated with the development at the territory unit level are determined through
statistical and econometric methods. Then, a multi-criteria approach is developed to
allocate each territory unit to an agglomerate of territory according to the Pareto frontier
established. The framework is applied to the context of a set of parishes and counties of
the Alentejo Central region, southern Portugal. Results are presented and discussed in
the scope of a regional strategy of development
