The Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI): A Critical Analysis of the Indicator Grid

Marco Rossitti, Marta Dell’Ovo, Alessandra Oppio and Francesca Torrieri
Additional contact information
Marco Rossitti: Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Politecnico di Milano, Via E. Bonardi 3, 20133 Milano, Italy
Marta Dell’Ovo: Dipartimento di Architettura, Ingegneria delle Costruzioni e Ambiente Costruito, Politecnico di Milano, Via G. Ponzio 31, 20133 Milano, Italy
Alessandra Oppio: Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Politecnico di Milano, Via E. Bonardi 3, 20133 Milano, Italy
Francesca Torrieri: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Piazzale V. Tecchio 80, 80125 Napoli, Italy

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 12, 1-22

Abstract: The National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI) is a public policy designed to tackle depopulation in inner areas , defined according to the distance from centers offering essential services. Such a policy’s success is crucial to address the new challenges for planning brought to light by the COVID-19 pandemic. In this sense, there is a need to adequately support its implementation by providing handy decision support tools, understanding the power balances among municipalities, and defining proper interventions. The Indicator Grid , already used by the SNAI for project areas selection, can answer this need. However, the Grid ’s application to support public policy at the municipality level requires reviewing some of its features, such as the indicators’ large number and the impossibility of defining some of them at the municipal scale. Based on these premises, this paper aims at supporting inner areas policies by carrying out a critical analysis of the current SNAI Grid, aimed at improving its effectiveness. It relies on a hybrid methodology that merges qualitative data interpretations and statistical analyses. Thanks to this method, defining a parsimonious Grid by leaving its complexity and information level untouched is possible. The so-defined set of indicators can represent a valuable reference tool in pinpointing priorities for actions or selecting further territorial scopes from the SNAI perspective, even if it still brings some criticalities to be faced.

Keywords: SNAI Indicator Grid; hybrid methodology; public policies; decision support (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6927/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6927/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:12:p:6927-:d:578150

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().