Territorial identity and left-behind places: evidence from the central Italian Apennines from a time perspective

Abstract

This paper aims to link the issue of left-behind places with spatial inequalities and demonstrate how, in these places, different territorial identities have contributed to responding to external shocks. By applying principal component and cluster analyses to a set of Italian mountain municipalities, we identified different typologies of these left-behind places as of the early 1950s and examined how they reacted to external shocks in two subsequent periods (1951–1981 and 1981–2011). The results suggest the changing importance of the cognitive, cultural and relational domains in coping with the different phases of Italian economic development.