Natural amenities, peri-urban landscapes, and wealth: Insights from a mediterranean region

This chapter investigates urbanization and suburbanization trends as well as the latent relationship between short-term land-use change and wealth accumulation at a local scale. The empirical work demonstrates that urban expansion in Athens was frequently accompanied with multiple modifications in the use of the surrounding non-urban land, reflecting changes in the local socio-spatial structure. Diversity in the use of land surrounding built-up parcels increased in the last decades, possibly suggesting landscape fragmentation. Large urban parcels were often surrounded by a higher proportion of natural land than small parcels. The largest increase over time in forest and natural areas surrounding builtup parcels was observed in municipalities with high per-capita declared income and the reverse pattern was observed for sparse vegetation. Empirical results demonstrate that scattered urban expansion causes a polarization in suburban districts with high-quality and low-quality natural amenities. Sprawl increases economic inequality and sociospatial disparities contributing to a substantially unbalanced distribution of natural amenities, in turn determining a higher consumption of highquality land.