Reticular Systems to Identify Aggregation and Attraction Potentials in Island Contexts. The Case Study of Sardinia (Italy)

The purpose of the article is to evaluate territorial hierarchies, internal to an island context, through the theory of central places. To this end, the authors want to demonstrate how some key points of these theories are still relevant all the more if applied to geographically closed contexts, such as an island. Starting from these premises, this paper begins with a literature revision on the most important theories on central places with particular reference to the theories closest to contemporary world. Therefore, the authors study the attraction and aggregation potential of the Sardinian case study, defined by the most suitable localization theories for studying island contexts. This allowed not only to study the analysis of flows through a territorial-hierarchical model, under the theoretical assumptions of the Central Places Theories (CPTs), but also to develop a model and a reticular system on several levels, starting from the population data. This paper shows a first phase of a wider research and provides a bibliographic framework to understand how the theories of central places are still suitable for studying a closed system like an island.