A Multi-dimensional Approach to the Measurement of Territorial Attractiveness: Towards a Synthetic Indicator by Dario Musolino and Stephanie Volget

ABSTRACT

Attractiveness of firms, investments, tourists, students, workers, talented people, and other categories, is a very relevant issue for the regional and local economic development. This growing concern about this question requires a synthetic indicator that measure the global attractiveness of territories and places (not only their attractiveness for specific types of flows). Territorial attractiveness has been the object of many studies, in particular in Italy, but seldom this phenomenon has been analysed in an integrated and multidimensional way.
This paper has this objective, taking the 20 Italian NUTS2 regions into account.
The paper is based on the main methodological approaches defined at the international scale, and it privileges a participatory process for constructing the synthetic indicator. Thematic maps representing the results for the 20 regions reveal not only usual, but also unexpected patterns. Interestingly, for example, the North-South pattern of regional development does not comply with the attractiveness of Italy at the regional scale. The geography of attractiveness looks much less simple than other geographies that usually describe the Italian economy and society.