Protection of coastal areas in Italy: Where do national landscape and urban planning legislation fail?

•Demographic growth, urbanization rates and illegal development in coastal areas are discussed.•The relationship between national landscape legislation and urban planning is investigated.•The impact of national legislation on urbanization of coastal areas is emphasised and discussed through the concept of nomotropism.•Institutional and administrative fragmentation in coastal areas are analysed.

Italian coastal areas have been subject to strong anthropogenic pressure and urbanization processes over the past 60 years. Urbanization of the protected 300-m strip from shoreline has reached levels of over fifty per cent in some parts of the country. This article, by building on previous quantitative analyses and by providing some more quantitative data on the urbanization processes of coastal land at the provincial level, seeks to understand whether a con-cause that has led to a considerable urbanisation process is to be found in the way national landscape legislation has been designed, in its relationship with urban planning, and in the institutional and administrative fragmentation that characterise the management of coastal areas in Italy. After analysing landscape legislation and assessing its relationship with urban planning functions, following an approach based on concept of nomotropism the article highlights, for Italy as a whole, that national landscape legislation while seeking to protect and safeguard coastal areas paved the way for increased urbanization and development. Drawing on regional data on illegal development, the concept of nomotropism is also used to emphasise the impact that building amnesty laws have had on the practice of illegal development so contributing to increased urbanization processes.