Re-urbanizing the European City: A Multivariate Analysis of Population Dynamics During Expansion and Recession Times.

After a long phase of suburbanization promoting economic decentralization and uneven expansion of urban rings, re-urbanization has been observed in an increasing number of European cities. However, a comprehensive analysis of demographic dynamics underlying spatial patterns-and factors-of re-urbanization is still lacking for the European continent. This study contributes to fill this knowledge gap by proposing a comparative analysis of population dynamics at two spatial scales ('inner cities' and 'large urban zones') in 129 European metropolitan regions under economic expansion (2000-2007) and recession (2008-2014). Non-parametric correlations, principal component analysis, and stepwise multiple regressions were used to identify different spatial patterns of population growth at continental and regional scale in Europe. The number of cities studied that showed a trend towards re-urbanization increased from 36 in 2000-2007 to 47% in 2008-2014. Positive rates of population growth in inner cities were found to be associated with high levels of disposable per capita income at the metropolitan scale. During recession, spatial differences in population growth rates were suggestive of a moderate rearrangement towards re-urbanization in northern and central Europe and less polarized metropolitan regions, with declining population in inner cities of southern and eastern Europe. Based on peculiar demographic dynamics found in the study area, the analysis performed brings useful insights to the debate about the future development of European cities.

Paths to Change: Bio-Economic Factors, Geographical Gradients and the Land-Use Structure of Italy.

This study introduces a bio-economic approach to evaluate the influence of local socioeconomic contexts on complex processes of landscape transformation (urbanization, withdrawal of farming with woodland creation and loss in crop mosaics) in a sustainable development perspective. Land-use and socioeconomic indicators (including shares of agriculture, industry and services in total product, per-worker value added, productivity by economic sector, distance from central cities, latitude and elevation) at the local district scale in Italy have been considered together in an exploratory approach based on multivariate statistics. The combined use of land-use and socioeconomic indicators was preferred to more traditional approaches based on single-variable analysis and allows identifying latent factors of landscape transformation at the local scale. Our approach sheds light in the intimate relationship between regional economic structures and land-use change in districts with varying socio-environmental attributes across Italy. Urban-rural divides, coastal-inland dichotomy and the elevation gradient were relevant factors shaping urbanization-driven landscape transformations at the country scale. Indicators of economic structure (and especially industrial production and per-worker productivity of industry and services) were also documented to influence greatly entity and direction of change in the use of land. Discontinuous and dispersed urbanization has been demonstrated to be spatially-decoupled from consolidated (continuous and compact) urbanization, expanding into undeveloped rural areas progressively far away from central cities and being spatially associated with forest land.

The 2007 crisis and Greek wildfires: a multivariate analysis of suppression times.

Shifts in government priorities in response to the 2007 global recession have affected wildfire management and natural disaster funding arrangements, leading to a reduced effectiveness of fire suppression actions and increasing fire vulnerability. Our study investigates the role of local socioeconomic contexts on fire suppression effectiveness under economic expansion and recession in a Mediterranean region (Attica, Greece) strongly affected by 2007 crisis and displaying a persistently high density of peri-urban wildfires. Basic characteristics of wildfires (spatial distribution, intensity, and land use preferences) were investigated in the study area over two consecutive 8-year time intervals characterized by economic expansion (2000-2007) and recession (2008-2015). An integrated approach based on multivariate statistics and artificial neural networks was implemented to evaluate latent relationships between fire suppression time, wildfire characteristics, and socioeconomic dynamics. Controlling for wildfires' characteristics over the two time intervals, fire time length increased under crisis-mainly for small and medium-sized fires-possibly as an indirect response to reduced effectiveness of forest land management. Local contexts and political decisions influenced by economic downturns are relevant factors shaping wildfires' severity in the Mediterranean region. With recession, local contexts vulnerable to wildfires require more effective fire prevention measures, sustainable forest management, and regional planning.

Zero Net Land Degradation in Italy: the role of socioeconomic and agro-forest factors.

In 2012, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification has launched a policy strategy called 'Zero Net Land Degradation' (ZNLD), which aims to prevent the degradation of productive land and restore already degraded land. In Europe, and especially in Mediterranean Europe, land degradation is a complex phenomenon affecting both depopulated, marginal agro-forest regions and affluent agricultural areas. In an effort to develop a ZNLD strategy in Italy we identified the socioeconomic variables associated with environmental conditions leading to a long-term (1960-2010) reduction in land sensitivity to degradation. Our results show an increase in ZNLD areas in the last ten years. Rural municipalities classified at ZNLD showed an economy based on services, an agriculture sector oriented towards quality productions and more sustainable cultivation practices, a balanced population structure and the prevalence of a mixed farmland/woodland land-use structure. These results may inform a country-scale ZNLD strategy targeting complex human-natural degradation processes in ecologically-fragile Mediterranean areas.

Complexity in action: Untangling latent relationships between land quality, economic structures and socio-spatial patterns in Italy.

Land quality, a key economic capital supporting local development, is affected by biophysical and anthropogenic factors. Taken as a relevant attribute of economic systems, land quality has shaped the territorial organization of any given region influencing localization of agriculture, industry and settlements. In regions with long-established human-landscape interactions, such as the Mediterranean basin, land quality has determined social disparities and polarization in the use of land, reflecting the action of geographical gradients based on elevation and population density. The present study investigates latent relationships within a large set of indicators profiling local communities and land quality on a fine-grained resolution scale in Italy with the aim to assess the potential impact of land quality on the regional socioeconomic structure. The importance of land quality gradients in the socioeconomic configuration of urban and rural regions was verified analyzing the distribution of 149 socioeconomic and environmental indicators organized in 5 themes and 17 research dimensions. Agriculture, income, education and labour market variables discriminate areas with high land quality from areas with low land quality. While differential land quality in peri-urban areas may reflect conflicts between competing actors, moderate (or low) quality of land in rural districts is associated with depopulation, land abandonment, subsidence agriculture, unemployment and low educational levels. We conclude that the socioeconomic profile of local communities has been influenced by land quality in a different way along urban-rural gradients. Policies integrating environmental and socioeconomic measures are required to consider land quality as a pivotal target for sustainable development. Regional planning will benefit from an in-depth understanding of place-specific relationships between local communities and the environment.