Urban dispersion indicator to assess the Italian settlement pattern

Abstract

The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) reaffirmed the most urgent need to build actions to accelerate the restoration of policies to arrest and reverse the loss of natural ecosystems by 2030 and move towards full ecosystem recovery by 2050. Land take is a significant source of emissions and contributes to global warming and biodiversity loss in natural ecosystems. Consequently, it is crucial to act on it by investigating the phenomenon quantitatively and formally, thus contributing to the goal of zero net land take. In recent years, land take worldwide has become massive, leading in some cases to forming compact, high-density urban settlements. In other cases, it has led to dispersed, low-density urban settlements. The basic assumption underlying this research is that a compact context is more sustainable (environmentally, economically, and socially) than a dispersed urban one. Consequently, this research aims to investigate the evolution of land take from the point of view of the pattern of urban settlements and their dispersion over the Italian territory. The spatial configuration of the Italian settlement pattern at the regional and provincial level was analyzed through a Spatio-temporal analysis of the global Moran index and other quantitative variables. The results provide, for each territory, a reading of the main expansion dynamics that occurred from the ‘50s to nowadays: compact city, urban sprawl, or urban sprinkling.