Urban sprawl and local public expenditure : evidence from an Italian case study

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the dynamics of urban growth patterns and the costs necessary to provide public services. The case study considers the central area of the Veneto Region, a territory of about 3,700 square km, occupied by 145 municipalities, and with a total population of 2.1 million people. The paper compares the local public expenditures for the main services with the urban growth dynamics over the same time period. We used three different satellite images (1984, 1998, 2009) to detect the distribution of the built-up area, and we created an original algorithm for interpreting these images and quantifying the urbanized land. We run several data and we found that urban form affects the public costs of providing local services to residents, but the role of the built-up land depends on the type of services offered and on population density.