While displaying diversified economic values, agro-ecosystems remain a relevant component of rural landscapes in Southern Europe. Coupled with the expansion of ecologically fragile areas because of climate warming, intensification and simplification of rural landscapes—e.g., in lowland—represent frequent trajectories of rural land-use change (RLUC) in the Mediterranean region and demonstrated to harm ecosystem functionality and ecological quality, especially in a context of socioeconomic transformations of landscapes. Additionally, an incipient ‘extensivation’ of geographically remote and economically marginal agricultural systems was also observed, likely following depopulation and land abandonment. The present study elaborated in this direction, providing an integrated RLUC evaluation scheme based on a multivariate analysis of land-use indicators derived from official statistics. This approach was applied to a continuous, long-term RLUC monitoring of a rural landscape in an ecologically complex Mediterranean region (Latium, Central Italy) experiencing multiple trends (e.g., lowland urbanization, crop intensification in gently sloping areas, and land abandonment/depopulation in steep zones) with diversified environmental implications. Based on administrative inventories, such evaluation was carried out over fifty years (1970–2020) in the study area, considering trends over time in selected crop surfaces at the municipal scale as inputs of a multiway factor analysis (MFA). This analysis quantifies stability in the main rural land-use types and possible changes in the dominant farming systems. Simplified indicators of land configuration (namely a crop intensity index and a rural woodland index reflecting ‘intensification’ or ‘extensivation’ of local farming systems) made available at the same spatial and temporal scales completed the informative picture corroborating MFA results. Taken together, our findings delineate multiple changes in rural landscapes, discriminating land-use trajectories in coastal and inland districts. These development trajectories were basically dependent on processes of (i) land abandonment in relict and remote areas, (ii) crop intensification in dynamic rural districts, and (iii) fringe urbanization along the coastal strip.

The present study investigates territorial disparities in selected socioeconomic forces and environmental factors underlying soil degradation that may lead to early desertification processes in a dry Mediterranean region exposed to increasing human pressure. To verify if spatial disparities in land resources have increased over time, a standard approach based on the Environmentally Sensitive Area Index (ESAI) was adopted to evaluate sixty years of territorial transformations in Latium, Central Italy, a region prone to intense processes of land resource depletion. The ESAI provides a standard, holistic assessment of soil degradation based on the estimation of four different ‘resource qualities’ (climate, soil, vegetation, and land use) and their change over sufficiently long time windows; in this study, the procedure was run at three reference years (1960, 1990, and 2020). The observed divergence in soil degradation levels between coastal and inland districts arose during the study period, with a consequent reduction in the local-scale variability of the ESAI. Such differential processes observed along the elevation gradient in Central Italy are likely due to anthropogenic factors affecting land use and leveraging crop intensification in flat districts and farmland abandonment in steep areas. New findings to be achieved in the context of human impacts on land resource depletion are regarded as an original contribution to the study of early desertification processes in advanced economies.

Being intertwined with economic development, urbanization determines the present and future development path of regions and countries. The intimate relationship between urban expansion and economic development is of particular interest in the case of large regions with complex (and mostly non-linear) socio-demographic dynamics and a relevant primacy in the metropolitan system of a given country. Typical examples of advanced economies with settlement systems characterized by a high degree of city primacy are peripheral and disadvantaged European countries such as Portugal and Greece. For instance, the administrative region of Attica—centered on Athens, the Greek capital city—represents the largest metropolitan area of the country, hosting almost 3.8 million inhabitants in 2021 (36.2% of the Greek population). In this context, this study investigates the internal redistribution of the resident population in metropolitan Athens and the progressive development of satellite cities over a relatively longtime interval, testing the assumptions of the Spatial Cycle Theory (SCT) between 1951 and 2021 and predicting future development paths up to 2051. To investigate past, present, and future intra-regional population trends, we used data released from decadal (1951–2021) censuses and demographic forecasts for the years 2031, 2041, and 2051. Being in line with the SCT, the empirical results of our study document how demographic dynamics of individual centers influence largely—and independently—the long-term development of metropolitan regions, both with policy/planning regulation and in conditions of non-intervention (spontaneous urban growth).