Land urbanization in Central Italy: 50 years of evolution

The increasingly fast pace in urban conversion of land over the past 50 years in Italy is a phenomenon that is still difficult to quantify reliably owing to the chronic lack of knowledge at every territorial level, from national to municipal. This article describes the results of a study on the features of urbanization in the 1950s in the peninsular regions of Central Italy, based on uniform historical maps of the entire country. The historical data were compared from a qualitative and quantitative viewpoint with the present-day geography of settlements. Interesting information has emerged on possible significant thresholds in the relationship between demography and urban use of land, in addition to data on landscape effects to be construed as signs of specific trends underway today and scarcely taken into account by land management tools.