Despite numerous complaints and a daily series of alarms, the massive waste of land consumption in Italy continues unabated. Indeed, since the last Relationship of the Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), With data referring to the year 2024, it turns out that Italians are consuming land at a rate of 20 hectares per day. And every second, two square meters of natural soil are being erased by concrete, asphalt, and artificial surfaces. Houses, offices, shopping centers, warehouses, roads, factories. land consumption in Italy, according to ISPRA findings, has accelerated rapidly in recent years. In just one year, 2021, artificial cover was counted for 70 square kilometers, And concrete now covers 21.500 square kilometers of the country's land, 5.400 of which are buildings alone. An area equivalent to the entire Liguria region. The fact that we devour soil, rather than protecting it and making it more sustainable, has consequences for both the environment and for human health and safety. Specifically:
- Increases hydrogeological risk: Natural soil absorbs rainwater; concreted soil No.. And that means more flooding, floods, brakes, especially in urban areas. Furthermore, water flows faster on the surface, overloading drainage systems.
- Irreversible loss of fertile soil: soil is a resource non-renewable on a human scale and it takes hundreds of years to form a few centimeters of fertile soil. Covering with concrete or asphalt seals the soil, preventing microbial life and plant growth. This reduces the agricultural capacity , Food safety.
- Increased heat island effect: Concrete and asphalt absorb heat during the day and slowly release it at night. Cities become significantly more hot compared to surrounding areas (up to +5°C) and this worsens the quality of life and increases the risks for the health, especially in summer.
- Air quality is getting worse: less soil and vegetation means less photosynthesis, therefore less CO₂ absorbed and less oxygen produced. Artificial surfaces also generate fine (PM10 and PM2.5), especially traffic on asphalt.
- Finally, there is an aesthetic aspect that should not be underestimated, and it concerns the value of the landscape, enshrined in our Constitution (Article 9), as a defining feature of Italy's identity. We would be nothing and nobody without the Landscape, this time with a capital P, which we have inherited and which we have the duty to care for, conserve, protect, and enhance with the utmost delicacy. And the Landscape is also the city, where we must stop increasing building volumes and concrete, and embark on a surgical redevelopment of places and spaces, starting from the suburbs; it is the countryside, too often sacrificed by industrial warehouses built without any constraints and without restraints, where we must encourage young people to return; it is the sea, with its coastlines devoured by small and large-scale speculation; it is the hillside, which often collapses due to the country's notorious hydrogeological instability.
Read also:
- Hydrogeological instability: 9 billion euros wasted
- Building amnesties: one in four Italians applies for them (VIDEO)
- Tactical Urbanism: Low-Cost Interventions to Improve Public Spaces
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