Identifying the characteristics of peri-urban agriculture in Lombardy

The objectives of this paper are to define urban/rural systems in Lombardy and to analyse the rates of land uptake, increase in urbanisation and agricultural soil loss, and the characteristics of agriculture in these systems. In particular, the authors first identify the urban/rural systems using both traditional statistical techniques and spatial classification techniques. They then examine the different trends of land uptake and increase in urban areas by municipality in the different systems, by using the Land Use Database of the Lombardy Region for the years 1954, 1999 and 2007. They subsequently link these changes to the distribution of the socio-demographic and lifestyle characteristics, industrial and infrastructure development, employment and agricultural structure (location and characteristics of farms) to analyse the causes and consequences of land use change in Lombardy, and to characterize the agricultural structure in the urban/rural systems.