Land use, record in 2025: 102 square kilometres covered in Italia

In 2025, sealed surfaces accounted for 7.19 per cent of the country’s total land area: 21,644 square kilometres were covered by buildings, infrastructure, open spaces, facilities and other man-made surfaces.

In the last year alone, concrete and tarmac have destroyed over 10,200 hectares of natural areas, equivalent to more than 102 square kilometres. Restoration work, however, has covered just 746 hectares, leaving a net loss of almost 9,500 hectares.

Sicily has added just over 1,600 hectares of new artificial land, Lazio over 1,400 hectares, whilst Puglia and Lombardy have each added more than 1,000 hectares. Lombardy, together with Veneto and Campania, also remain the regions with the highest proportion of land covered by buildings and infrastructure: 12.27 per cent, 11.87 per cent and 10.65 per cent respectively.

Since 2006, new artificial cover has affected 96 per cent of Italian municipalities, with the most significant increases over the past year observed in particular in Tuscania (+319 hectares), Montalto di Castro (+316) and Catania (+198). Excluding ground-mounted photovoltaic installations, the highest figures are found in Rome (+74 hectares), Foggia (+72), Cerignola (+53) and Campagna (+51).

Land degradation is also on the rise in the most vulnerable areas: over the course of a year, it increased by 1,106 hectares in flood-prone areas and by 707 hectares in landslide-prone areas.

More than half of the new artificial surfaces (52.6 per cent) are associated with construction sites covering 5,387 hectares.

The new buildings cover 725 hectares of natural land and 435 hectares of existing building sites, representing a total increase of 1,160 hectares.

Open spaces, service areas and other man-made surfaces have increased by 1,230 hectares, whilst mining operations and infrastructure cover 390 and 506 hectares respectively, including works carried out on existing sites.

Among the fastest-growing sectors is logistics, which has expanded by 390 hectares in one year, particularly in Piedmont (+115 hectares) and Lazio (+59). The expansion of ground-mounted solar power (+2,798 hectares, almost forty times the 2021 figure) and wind farms (+118 hectares, including associated infrastructure) is also continuing.

Over two-thirds of the new developments are concentrated in towns and cities. By 2025, 4,231 hectares of green spaces and 320 hectares of tree cover will have disappeared, reductions that will also be reflected in summer temperatures. In the most sealed-off areas, the ground reaches temperatures more than 10°C higher than in the surrounding rural areas, with local peaks of up to 12°C. Where there are more trees, however, temperatures are up to 1.8°C lower

Maria Alessandra Gallone, President of ISPRA-SNPA, comments: “Today, environmental knowledge serves not only to describe problems, but also to devise solutions. And the value of this report lies precisely in this: it not only captures the extent of land consumption, but also provides concrete guidance on how to combat it and identifies opportunities for the sustainable development of regions and cities. ISPRA and the National System for Environmental Protection provide data, analyses and tools that enable us to identify alternatives to land loss and to steer decisions towards the restoration and regeneration of what already exists.”