GLOBAL ECONOMIC AND ENVIRONMENTAL THREATS TO ITALIAN URBAN AND RURAL AREAS

In recent decades, several global shocks have shaken our societies and economies, bringing to light the need to address new and hard challenges in an increasingly connected world. Recent global shocks (e.g., the Great Recession, the Pandemic, the Ukraine and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, etc…), but also the frequent occurrence of extreme natural events, increased communities’ attention to the necessity to be better prepared for more recurrent and disruptive shocks. In particular, the advent of the pandemic has raised awareness that new types of shocks and disasters can affect our systems, and that it is, therefore, necessary to rediscover a new concept of resilience to identify the most vulnerable and exposed areas to disturbances of different type – such as economic recessions or health threats, as well as the more and more frequent natural hazards caused by climate change. In such a complex scenario, it is also of paramount importance to recognize the fragilities of rural and inner areas to increase their resilience to such shocks. This thesis fits into this context, analyzing the impact of the most recent, relevant global shocks from different perspectives by adopting a multi-disciplinary approach and focusing on the differences between urban and rural areas whenever possible. More in detail, Chapter 1 analyses the interplay of multiple shocks, i.e. the economic recession and the pandemic, to highlight the vulnerability and interconnectedness of modern economies. The study reveals that Italian provinces that better adapted to the financial crisis have been less resistant to the spread of Covid-19. Interestingly, their ability to adapt to the Great Recession by restructuring their sectoral composition may have led them, as a byproduct, to become more connected and, therefore, more vulnerable to the propagation of the disease. Chapter 2 contributes to disentangling the climate change-migration nexus in a developed country, looking at the individual characteristics that might affect the propensity to migrate in response to climate change in Italian inner and mountain areas of central-southern Apennines. Residential choices might also depend on environmental conditions, which could increasingly lead people to move to more amenable places in order to reduce the negative effects of climate change. Most of the studies about the climate change-migration nexus focus on the relation between environmental degradation and international migration as an adaptive strategy to the effects of climate change in developing countries. Conversely, this work focuses on internal migration as a response to changes in weather patterns in developed countries. The study shows that some individual characteristics may actually influence the decision to move to more ‘pleasant’ places to adapt to the increasing negative consequences of climate change. Finally, Chapter 3 provides a descriptive analysis of the distribution of social factors (demographic and socio-economic characteristics, social and labour market infrastructure, and administration quality) and multiple natural hazards in Italian urban and rural municipalities. Results show that higher levels of natural hazards are distributed in areas characterised by a greater demographic exposure, social and material vulnerability and a higher presence of most fragile groups (elderly, female and low-income households). Moreover, the levels of hazard are higher in rural areas rather than in urban ones. The novelty of this thesis lies in the study of the different global shocks that have affected our societies and economies in recent years, with the aim to identify which factors the less resilient areas have in common, even when disturbances are analysed from different perspectives and with different approaches. Generally speaking, the three Chapters show that the most affected communities by global shocks are those characterised by a higher presence of most fragile social groups – such as the elderly, women and low-income households. They also highlight that, from a geographical perspective, the most vulnerable areas are usually the less urbanised ones. Our results also underline that the factors usually characterising more resilient regions to economic disturbances – e.g., related variety - were the main diffusion mechanisms (in terms of virus diffusion) of negative effects in the event of a shock such as a pandemic. Taken together, these results call for further investigating the factors that might improve communities’ and regions’ resilience and ability to withstand different kinds of shocks. They also point to the necessity to reduce the divide between urban and rural areas in this respect. Therefore, this thesis calls for (re-)discovering resilience and place-based policies to jointly reduce the exposure and improve the vulnerability of people and places to multiple shocks. Policies dealing with these challenges should thus identify the territories at greater risk by considering which common factors most fragile places share and taking into account their specific characteristics and sensitivity to different threats, tailoring interventions that may reinforce resistance to shocks.