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Cities’ Rankings are increasingly used to compare territorial performances related to different dimensions of well-being or territorial development. In the context of urban and territorial planning, they often contribute to legitimizing governance processes and have a marked influence on the evaluation of the policies’ success. Therefore, even if those analytical practices cannot be considered as robust tools, they express a great potential in terms of communication capacity and as an awareness raising tool.

The current spatial planning system in Italy demonstrates its lack of a data infrastructure so robust, flexible and adaptive to provide adequate performance in the capacity to support the decision-making process. This weakness is manifested even more in the management of the territorial transformations under the pressure of rapid changes involving social, environmental and economic dimensions. The ecosystem services (ES) approach constitutes a robust framework to contribute to the renewal of the planning system by making explicit complex dynamics until now considered only marginally and by introducing spatially explicit knowledge as an effective decision support system (DSS). This work focuses on the class of Regulating and Maintaining Ecosystem Services (ReMES) as it is considered particularly relevant with respect to the ecosystems’ potential of expressing environmental performance and contributing to human well-being. A further characteristic of this class is the often significant mismatch between the spatial scale of the territorial transformations and the (larger) scale at which changes in ES supply are measured.

The production context linked to the agricultural sector in Basilicata is not very competitive, especially in international contexts. In fact, there are few companies that occupy a good market position beyond the border. The reasons are to be found in the high degree of fragmentation, in the high percentage of small businesses, mainly family-run, and a general low propensity to entrepreneurship.

Land use change significantly affects ecosystem services provision. This impact, however, is difficult to assess and thus often neglected in policy making. It is therefore the task of territorial planning discipline to explore methodological approaches capable of making explicit complex relationships in order to use them as tools for effectively designing the sustainable development. In this paper, we report changes in land use over a 28-year period considering the territory of the Basilicata region. Our aim is to translate these changes in ecosystem services values, highlighting potentials of a framework able to integrate monetary figures into a larger approach based on the interactions between biomes and the meaning of human well-being more closely linked to the economics sector. The results show that the greatest loss occurred at the detriment of wooded areas and agricultural mosaic while bare land and arable land increased. Several municipalities experienced significant changes involving above all the classes in the agricultural compartment. The growth of urban settlements took place everywhere affecting to a much greater extent the most important centers, the only ones not subject to depopulation. Our estimate quantifies these changes in a total annual loss of ecosystem service delivery higher than €39 million with some municipalities where this loss corresponds to a significant part of GDP. Reversing the perspective, moreover, the internal areas emerge where, also due to depopulation, the monetization of ecosystem services leads to pro capita amounts equivalent to multiples of GDP per capita. The study sets the basis for an approach oriented towards defining tangible criteria for assessing the sustainability of territorial transformations and land use change.

Social, demographic and economics transformations occurred in Basilicata Region (Italy) since 1950’s, have been developed transformations not always linked to effective and sustainable urban planning tools. A general research gap regards the tools for assessing such effectiveness of planning. In this work we describe the preliminary design of a thematic Atlas presenting Basilicata Region results achieved in previous researches concerning urban growth and consequently land use changes. On the bases of a territorial information system developed by LISUT research group we analyzed urban growth since 1950 comparing it with recent phenomena of RES (renewable energy sources) plants settlement occurred since 2000. Such spatial information, evaluated through fragmentation indexes, are compared with socio-economic data at municipal scale. The results are a comprehensive picture of local settlement development trends that allows to communicate evidences of current planning system including urban planning tools, sectorial planning (operating at regional scale), public investments program evidences. The Atlas will be published for Basilicata Region area (Italy) as a model in order to analyze and compare other European Regions.

Economic, social and environmental aspects have led local, regional and national governments to promote policies to increase the spread of renewable energy (especially wind energy). The transformation into an energy system based on renewable sources is therefore already underway. In this context, the effects of renewable energy sources on ecosystems are to be analyzed. In this regard, the 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA), promoted by the United Nations, is an international reference for the development of a global environmental assessment approach. One of its most innovative contributions is to promote a structured approach in which the value of the ecosystem in the decision-making process should be based on the idea of the services it provides to humans.

Agricultural production in Basilicata Region is strongly characterized by a high degree of fragmentation, the large percentage of small family businesses and a generalized low propensity to entrepreneurship. Although there are productive realities that are suited to entrepreneurship, going beyond the local market dimensions. The low propensity of agricultural producers to associate in consortium or any other formal collaboration is also a factor to be reinforced in order to improve the competitiveness of the respective supply chains.

According to the United Nations, 68% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050. This makes urban growth one of the cornerstones of sustainable development policies that must be implemented from the outset. Well-managed urbanization is essential to minimize environmental degradation and land use, while maximizing the benefits of agglomeration and ensuring the expected well-being of all city dwellers. On the other hand, it is equally important that these growth dynamics interface systematically with ongoing climate change and its expected effects on the urban environment. Local climate regulation is a crucial urban ecosystem service as it directly affects the quality of urban life. Although its link with soil sealing and land-use change is theoretically known, it is worth explaining this relationship in terms of significant parameters of both altered surfaces and type of urban expansion.

From the beginning of the 21st century, following major European and global initiatives such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Economics of Ecosystem and Biodiversity, the idea that Ecosystem services could be used as a decision support tool, gained considerable importance in several fields: from economy to public policy, from territorial planning to environmental assessment. This research is part of the methodological framework of an important strategic reference: the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, an international project that defines ecosystem services and assesses the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being. According to the MA, ecosystem services are grouped into four categories: supplying services, regulation services, cultural services, and support services. Starting from this, the present work contributes to build interpretative models for the evaluation of a relevant part of the fourth class of ecosystem services: the territorial touristic attractiveness. The InVEST model, an open source toolkit, has been applied to assess attractiveness of the Basilicata Region considering both natural and cultural heritage in order to highlight strengths and weaknesses of the investigated methodology.

Since the beginning of the industrial era, humans have been modifying the chemical composition and physical properties of the atmosphere, favoring an increase in the concentration of gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrogen oxide (N2O) well beyond the limits never previously exceeded [1]. If there is still uncertainty in the world and in some cases scepticism about the real extent of environmental or climate change, the increase in the concentration of these gases shows that humans are actually changing, heavily, the environment [2]. Growing disquiet of the scientific community about phenomena linked to climate modification and land use changes, to which they are often due or at least related, has led to the need to strengthen the levels of information and develop methodologies capable of constituting an adequate framework to support policies for territorial planning and land use transformation that can boast a holistic view of services and functions that are indispensable and/or desirable for human wellbeing. It is precisely in this context that this work is aimed at providing an estimate of the amount of carbon stored within the boundaries of the Basilicata region, no longer referring to it as an estimated quantity for its own sake, but as an assessment of a service provided by ecosystems for the regulation of the global climate that has gained increasing strength over the last 50 years [3].

It is widely recognized that tourism sector plays an important role in territorial analysis both because of its economic and employment potential and its environmental and social implications. Investigating dynamics that influence tourist attractiveness and receptivity is fundamental in territorial planning sector in order to monitor regional and sustainable development policies, above all with a view to pursuing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [1].

The Good Practices selected by the province of Potenza within the LOCARBO project, which are part of the Three Thematic Pillars of the project described below fully testify the experimentation of new cooperation practices in low-density contexts, where the results are positive when virtuous collaborations have been activated, linking energy policies objectives with citizens awareness, sustainable energy themes and new local entrepreneurial actions able to provide positive externalities from the economic point of view and the exploitation of local resources. This work re-classify the Good Practices presented in the LOCARBO project, according to different criteria constructed looking at the peculiar characteristics of the territorial context of reference. Low density contexts, implementation of integrated projects, inter-institutional cooperation models, collaborative approaches between institution and community and valorization of communities skills and local resources are the new criteria built after reading the local peculiarities, through to review projects and development strategies in Energy efficiency programs.

The increase of artificial land use represents a relevant indicator in land management policies and practices. It is a useful tool in assessing the quality of settlement processes and the protection and enhancement policies in rural and natural areas. Over time land take processes have been caused by different phenomena: urban or industrial expansion, realization of infrastructures, the development or the productive exploitation of territorial areas characterized by the presence of specific resources (natural, mining, etc.). This phenomenon is no longer a direct consequence of a real need of new expansion areas throughout Italian national territory. In the past the phenomenon was mainly due to residential, productive or tertiary sector needs, and it was generated by demographic growth and the consequent urbanization process. In the last two decades land take is more and more related to a weak territorial governance, generally linked to an inefficiency of urban and territorial planning instruments and sometimes of speculative real estate initiatives. In this paper a spatial analysis procedure oriented to calculate indicators of urban fragmentation for Basilicata Region has been presented. Such indicators could drive to the identification of two phenomena: urban-sprawl and urban-sprinkling according to the literature classification proposed in several researches by Romano et al. The results represent a useful contribution in order to improve regional normative system concerning urban development. The research is part of a wider project on environmental and territorial indicators (INDICARE) promoted by FARBAS (Environmental Observatory Foundation of Basilicata Region) in collaboration with the University of Basilicata.