Land Consumption in Italy +10% in 2022: Lombardy at the helm

Regions of densely built-up Italy continue to consume territory, depriving nature and the ecosystem of balance. Updated data from Ispra (Instituto Superior de Protección e Investigaciones Ambientales) show an increase in the built-up area, with a 10% increase in 2022. Despite a shrinking population, our country seems to be suffocating in construction sites and concrete.

The consumption of territory in Italy, figures for 2022.

On the one hand, Italy is striving for ecological transformation and the development of bio-building, but on the other hand, it is faced with concrete that obscures space and takes away the level of biodiversity of species. This contrasting image becomes clearer in the Ispra Ambiente report, which''confirms the exponential growth of territory consumption in our country. The phenomenon spreads 10% more national level in 2022 compared to 2021. Regions with large urban areas are a factor affecting the national average. Lombardy absorbs the most land, with an absolute leadership of more than 290 thousand hectares of its territory that have been artificially occupied. Lombardy alone occupies 13.5% of Italian artificial territories. These are figures that display the multifarious urban structure of Italy, especially when compared to the investment of only 7 thousand hectares in neighboring Aosta. The 2023 National Atlas of Territory Consumption emphasizes regions by size. In 2022 they consumed more territory compared''with 2021: Lombardy (12.16%); Veneto (11.88%); Campania (10.52%); Emilia-Romagna (8.89%); Puglia (8.24%); Lazio (8.16%); Friuli-Venezia Giulia (8.02%); Liguria (7.26%).

In one year, a city the size of Vicenza, Italy is going through an unprecedented demographic contraction, moving ever closer to demographic winter. But the paradox is that the consumption of the territory increased by 7.14% in only one year in 2022 (+10% compared to the previous year). Italy absorbed 77 square kilometers of free territory in just one year; it is the same as if another city, such as Vicenza, with a population of about 110 thousand people, were added in 2022. In fact, some regions and cities that are already congested''post-war migrant flows of the 20th century, absorb land and space to build or open up construction sites.

What territory is Italy absorbing?

Between 2021 and 2022, a net loss of volume of 71 square kilometers of agricultural or natural land has been recorded. In addition, intensive crops and livestock production continue to grow vertically, and this is quite alarming; recall the spectacular building of pigs in China. Thus, there is a risk of taking land away from organic and more extensive farming. In 2022, the occupation of building sites, concrete and man-made structures continued at a rate of 2.2 square meters per second. Sixteen large floor tiles per second are being added to our country, taking''natural areas and vulnerable areas in need of protection from the soil effects of extreme weather events'. Despite the floods (the latest in Emilia-Romagna andTuscany have caused deaths and more than a billion in flood damage), an Italy bereft of Italians continues to expand beyond reason.