The geography of inner areas in 2020. Territories between potential and weaknesses

A significant part of Italian territory is characterised by a spatial organisation based on “small centres”, often of limited size but with significant artistic or naturalistic value, which in many cases can only provide limited access to essential services for their inhabitants. The term “Inner Areas” can be used to summarise the specific characteristics of these areas.

The map of inner areas, municipalities’ classification w.r.t. access to essential services, is a tool that examines the entire Italian territory at the municipal level. First of all, it identifies essential service provision centres, i.e. one or more municipalities able to provide simultaneously: schools with a full range of secondary education, at least one grade 1 emergency care hospital and at least one Silver category railway station (medium/small systems with an average degree of uptake for metropolitan/regional services and short-distance journeys).

It also categorises all other municipalities according to their distance from these service provision centres (in terms of average actual road travel times). It classifies them into four zones of increasing relative distance – Outlying areas, Intermediate areas, Peripheral areas and Ultra-peripheral areas – indicating a potentially higher level of difficulty in accessing services. The Inner Areas of our country are made up of municipalities classified as intermediate, peripheral and ultra-peripheral.

2014 Map of Inner Areas has been developed through a methodological process involving ISTAT, the Bank of Italy and regional authorities, and served as a reference for National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI), part of 2014-2020 Partnership Agreement (PA). The updated 2020 Map of Inner areas will continue to be used in the new 2021-2027 PA.