Littoralization and rural-urban divide in the Italian region of the Marches

The entire society of the Marches is very economically and entrepreneurially feverish, oriented to spare money and invest and work in the family firms, still conserving a common root of origin, surely based on the past socioeconomic organization of sharecropping in agriculture, and mainly managing SMEs. Thus, it is not surprising to find households composing the annual work calendar with activities pertaining to different industries in all the regional territory, so that the ‘urban’ and the ‘rural’ are in reality mixed. These results are interesting because showed a territory within with an urban-rural divide does exist, but has very specific features and different from the usual stereotype of a trivial duality between urban/advantaged and rurality/lagging societies. Nevertheless, littoralization of infrastructures is an evident matter in terms of landscape shaping. The coast has only near the 10% of the total line not yet invaded by buildings. This wouldn’t be a problem for industries or inhabitants––used to live in such a condition–– but could be a problem for the future tourism sustainability and its competitiveness, if the traditional tourists’ behavior will change in search of more ‘natural’ destinations. Eventually giving some suggestions to eventually better govern the land use, it is important to stress the opportunity to stop land consumption in the coastal line and in the hilly zones, this latter actually endangered by further urbanization and industrial infrastructuration, where lots of industrial and commercial sheds have been built, being not yet used probably due not only to the national and global economic crisis, but for an excessive over-building scheme. An interesting topic for future research is the industrial localization in the narrow flats along the river valley in the inner rural areas. The further crowding of easily accessible areas will occupy fertile farming soils and endangered the territorial order with potential floods and landscape degradation. The land use policy and rural and agricultural policies, intended in a territorial perspective, have to maintain the goal of contrasting the further divide between urban and the inner areas of the region, the hills and mountains, where the danger of depopulation is actually current. These zones could play an important role in de-crowding ‘sea, sand and sun’ tourism, attracting tourists to the inner rural areas, and in maintaining the ‘food and wine’ local traditions and a rural and trustable general aptitude in social behavior.