Contemporary economic, social and political change, summarized in the idea of globalization, raises questions about the validity of Chilean regionalization and, in general terms, poses doubts on traditional notions of region. Mismatch between institutional structures and changes shaped by globalization, the hard articulation of decisions requiring different spatial scales of management, and the mutation of territorial social identities, are all motives for such questioning. In this paper we focus on emerging local identities, both to explain the crisis of regionalization and to evaluate the new expressions of regionalism that could sustain nationwide development projects.