Factors affecting land-taking processes in Italy at the regional scale: empirical findings from Sardinia

Land take is a process of significant relevance in the countries of European Union (EU). In 2011, the European Commission (EC) put in evidence that an important milestone for the EU should be to reach the goal of no net land take by 2050, and to take under strict control the impact on land-taking processes of the EU policies in the new Structural Funds programming period (2014-2020) (Communication of the EC to the European Parliament COM(2011) 571 of 20.9.2011). Moreover, the EC indicates that land take in the EU amounted to more than 1,000 km2 per year between 1990 and 2000, decreasing to about 920 km2 between 2000 and 2006 (European Commission, 2011), and that, as a consequence, the objective of no net land take by 2050 would imply a decrease rate of about 800 km2 per year. Land take in Italy parallels the difficult general situation of the EU countries. Figures at the national level put in evidence that in 2009 a 7.3 percent of the Italian land had an artificial land cover (EC, Eurostat, 2012), with an average growth rate of about 6 percent between 1990 and 2000 and of about 3 percent between 2000 and 2006 (ISPRA, 2011, p. 479). The implementation of analyses of land-taking processes at the regional level is problematic since currently available geographic databases and information systems do not provide systemic information on the phenomenon (CRCS, 2012). However, a few Italian regional administrations, such as Lombardy and Sardinia, have set up regional information systems that address land-taking processes. The geographic information systems of these regions allow to relate land take with spatial, economic and planning-policy related variables, and to infer on correlations between such variables and the land-taking phenomenon. In this paper we analyze the Sardinian land-taking process as related to factors which are identified as relevant variables in several studies concerning land take, such as land-parcel size, accessibility, proximity to regional and local cities and small settlements, natural risk, proximity to nature conservation areas. We study the land-taking process through various datasets accounting for changes of land uses over time: urban areas as of the end of the 1950’s, as identified in the Regional Landscape Plan of Sardinia; Urban Morphological Zones as of 1990, made available by the European Environment Agency; land-use map of Sardinia, produced in 2008 by the Sardinian regional administration. The results and inferences of our study could be easily generalized to other Italian and EU regions, under the necessary condition that geographic databases and maps were made available for these contexts as well. The influence of the factors/variables found relevant on land take could be taken into account to define regional planning policies to limit or possibly prevent land take, and, by doing so, help implementing the EC recommendation on no net land take by 2050 into the EU regional policies.