Far, far away municipalities: Has the Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas helped in reducing distances from essential services?

This study evaluates whether the Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI) has improved accessibility to essential services in peripheral municipalities. Introduced in 2014, the SNAI targets territories characterized by demographic decline and limited access to key services such as schools, healthcare, and transport infrastructure. Using real-time travel data from OpenStreetMap (OSM) and Tom Tom, we develop a replicable framework to monitor driving times to service hubs for more than 7,600 Italian municipalities. Our tool replicates the methodology used to identify Inner Areas during the second programming cycle of the SNAI (2021-2027). Applying this framework, we update the classification of Inner Areas for 2025 and document a 20% increase in their number compared with the latest official classification. We then estimate a two-period Difference-in-Differences (DiD) model combined with Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to compare municipalities targeted by the strategy with similar non-targeted areas. The results suggest that municipalities included in the SNAI did not experience improvements in accessibility during the period considered. On average, treated municipalities display a modest increase in travel times of about 2.4 minutes relative to comparable Inner Areas not included in the strategy. These findings indicate that, while the SNAI may contribute to broader territorial development objectives, measurable improvements in road accessibility remain limited.