SETTLEMENTS AND SERVICE PROVISION IN
SARDINIA
Sardinia is thesecond biggest island in the
Mediterranean sea, after Sicily. It is located west of
the Italian peninsula and south of the French island of
Corsica.It is surrounded by the Tyrrhenian Seaon
the eastern and southern coast and by the Sea of
Sardinia on the west coast. It is one of the 20 regions
of Italy.
It is divided into four provinces (Sassari, Oristano,
Nuoro, Sud Sardegna) and one metropolitan city,
which is also the capital andthe largest city on the
island, Cagliari.
In ancient Greek, Sardinia was namedIchnusa,fromthe Greek wordichnos,
“footprint”, as the shape of the island reminds us of the shape of a human
footprint.
The island extends over a total of 24.100 km2, which makes it the third largest
Italian region by size.
68%of the island consists ofhills and rocky highlands, 18% of plains, and
14% of mountains. The coasts are 1.897 km long and part of the Sardinian
territory extends to minor islands such as Sant’Antioco, San Pietro, and the island
of Asinara.
Itspopulationof around1.7 million peopleincreases during the summer
months when tourists from all over the world arrive on the island's four shores.
Tourism is a major source of income in Sardinia,but when excessive,
especially in some locations during the months of July and August, it causes
severe harm to the environment, decreasing the quality of services offered by
humans and by the natural environment.
This region has beenintensely settled since the Middle Holocene (c.7750 BP).
and the prehistoric population of the island is assumed to have built one of the
dominating features of Sardinia: thenuraghi,conic structures built out of blocks
of basalt with no bonding between the blocks. Most buildings are quite small, but
some seem to have been fortresses.
In Sardinia there are many settlements with different sizes and functions. The
hierarchy of settlements shows few large towns and many small towns:
-Cagliari, in the south, is the capital city and the only city with apopulation
over 250.000. It is a multifunctional settlement butit is primarily a port and a
market town;
- a town such as Carboniawas built to provide housingfor the workers of the
nearby mines;
-Olbiais the main port which connects the islandto Italy during the summer
season
- many small towns are situated inland because in the past the island’s
economywas based on agriculture, grazing and mining.Until the 50’s 50% of
workers were working in the agropastoral sector and among industrial workers,
half of them were employed in zinc and coal mines. Most of the population lived in
inland areas and almost one-third of the population still lived insmall villages, in
houses without toilets or running drinking water, in areas that were often not
connected by roads.
The seaside was always negatively valued by the Sardinian population, as it was
seen as hostile and even dangerous. The monetary value of the areas near the sea
was therefore very modest. Many plots that are currently used for tourism were
bought for ridiculously low prices compared to the current monetary profits.
Nowadays the island is going through aprocess of rural depopulation,
especially in internal areas and small villages. People are moving to settlements
near the sea because of thedevelopment of tourism.
Tourism in Sardinia started in Gallura, a region ofthe island located in the
northeast, where aconsortium named Costa Smeraldabought around 3.500
hectares of land in March of 1962.
Costa Smeraldaas a tourism project has significantly changed the economy of
the island as a whole, not just in Gallura, as the number of tourists increased on
all four coasts. In 1950 the island had only 30 hotels and around 175 inns
(Giordano 1995) and the number of arrivals was around 72.000 a year. By the
2000s, this number grew 33-fold, skyrocketing to 2.360.000 arrivals and a total of
12.3 million nights spent on the island.
