Modeling regulating ecosystem services along the urban–rural gradient: A comprehensive analysis in seven Italian coastal cities

Over the last decades, the environmental burden borne by natural ecosystems to sustain life in urban areas has considerably increased. For this reason, the network of interconnected green areas and features, referred to as Urban Green Infrastructure, is increasingly being promoted as a valuable means to enhance the life quality of city dwellers by providing Ecosystem Services. We present a spatial analysis of Ecosystem Services provision and synergies/trade-offs along the urban–rural gradient for the following Italian coastal Metropolitan cities: Genoa, Rome, Bari, Naples, Cagliari, Reggio Calabria and Palermo. We focused our attention on three macro classes of human-induced environmental pressures that are particularly critical to the quality of life in urban contexts, namely air pollution, Urban Heat Island effect, and alteration of the water cycle. We found that all of the selected Ecosystem Services, besides a few exceptions, are provided as a bundle, which means they appear together repeatedly, forming an association. On average, the Ecosystem Services provision grows at comparable paces moving from the inner urban core towards the peri-urban and rural areas. As a consequence, most densely urbanized areas were found to be Ecosystem Services coldspots compared to peri-urban and rural areas.