Understanding the Role of Nature in Urban-Rural Linkages: Identifying the Potential Role of Rural Nature-Based Attractive Clusters That Serve Human Well-Being

Rural areas provide unique amenities for recreational purposes which are highly appreciated by urban inhabitants. This generates an important but often hidden relationship between the urban and the rural. The aim of our study is first to provide empirical evidence for this linkage and then to identify for Italy, at the municipal level, those rural areas which actually function as nature-based attractive clusters. We used the data coming from a participatory webGIS survey that asked 1632 Italian respondents to mark attractive nature related places locally, regionally, nationally and world-wide to explain quantitatively and qualitatively the relationship between urban and rural. From the survey, indicators were developed to rank the nature-based attractive clusters. Our results pointed out a major (almost double) flow from urban to rural for natural amenities, which increased with the spatial level at which attractive nature areas were marked. This analysis allowed for the identification rural clusters of Italian municipalities that form nodal points for nature-based urban well-being; shedding light on an often neglected urban-rural relationship. The method is applicable in other countries and may stimulate better planning and management strategies for improving rural areas, taking an urban-rural perspective.