Agrarian development and conflicts of land utilization in the coastal plains of Calabria (South Italy)

Abstract

In the Mediterranean area modern economic development is concentrating more and more on the favourably situated coastal plains. The coastal plains of Calabria, which are examined on the basis of land utilization mapping, form, in this backward S Italian region, individually characteristic areas of different levels of agrarian development. Areas with insufficient aid and stagnating development and those with a strong initial developmental impulse and hesitant further development, stand face-to-face with areas with a continuous upward trend. The latter fit into the ranks of those consolidated agricultural regions of S Italy in which government aid and private initiative are multifariously intertwined and together support the process of development. Up to now, however, the different non-agricultural interests have impeded the continuing progress of the process more and more and given rise to awkward land utilization conflicts. Through settlement expansion, the building of transport facilities and ports for industrial zones as well as tourism, the use of land for agriculture is, to an increasing extent, being taken away so that regional planning seems imperative.