The Future of Agriculture within its Competition with Urban Sprawl

The paper analyzes the main landscape resources that characterize periurban land, the productive and social-economic processes involved, and the consequent territorial and landscape repercussions. This study therefore focuses on critical aspects of agricultural areas on the urban fringe. This kind of area is increasingly assigned the essential function of improving the quality of life of urban populations, given the various environmental and social roles that agriculture has always played and continues to do so, albeit in different ways depending on specific local conditions, in addition to its purely productive roles. Moreover, many of the issues examined in the study for what concerns suburban areas are no longer a prerogative of periurban spaces and also extend to several rural situations with a low development density, where new dynamic and modestly-sized agricultural landscapes are arranged like tiles over the pre-existent rural - agricultural frame. Some of the instruments needed to innovate and evolve the current approach to planning are not always applied systematically within an organised model for the planning of periurban spaces, and not always duly supported by economic programming tools. These considerations therefore highlight the strategic and fundamental role of integration between spatial and agricultural economic planning policies and instruments. The paper also considers the analytical aspects useful for characterising some of the significant processes undergone in periurban areas. Data on land use, demography, the built-up system and town planning zoning of a study area is used. The processing performed demonstrated that the integrated analysis of developed land and population density variables offers a highly accurate description of development arrangements and their evolution, contributing to providing both qualitative and quantitative indications useful for measuring the level of efficiency of development arrangements and the degree of alteration of the landscape matrix.