Accessibility, rurality and remoteness: an investigation on the Island of Sardinia, Italy

The dichotomy between rural and urban settings has been used by census systems across the world in order to distinguish areas with high density population from areas with low density and where the primary occupation is connected to the agricultural sector. In this paper we study the level of accessibility, remoteness and rurality for municipalities in Sardinia, Italy. We apply a spatial analysis by means of indicators, such as accessibility for commuters (De Montis, Caschili and Chessa, 2011), the index of relative rurality, the metropolitan-rural interface levels (Waldorf, 2006) and the rurality- remoteness combined classification (Dijkstra and Poelman, 2008). We investigate whether accessibility shows a similar spatial pattern, with respect to remoteness and rurality, and thus we provide an analysis of the Sardinian setting that is of help for policy-makers and planners to understand some of the relevant regional and urban factors that have driven recent developments.