Abstract Inner Peripheries is a recent concept based on both peripherality and marginality features, thus far from the commonly adopted geographical notion of periphery. Inner Peripheries are fragile territories covering rural Europe, which suffer from depopulation, low economic potential, and weak territorial cohesion. However, these territories are extremely important for the provision of goods and services, and the stewardship of natural and semi-natural environments. Such dichotomous condition poses several challenges for planning in the EU context, particularly regarding the implementation of the Rural Development Policy. Therefore, current planning needs to contextualize the policy implementation by considering local needs and territorial resources in the Inner Peripheries. With a focus on the Italian case, the main aim of the present work is to explore to what extent Inner Peripheries cope with Rural Development targets, in the light of improving the effectiveness of planning interventions. We create and implement a set of context indicators to describe the Inner Peripheries’ territorial characteristics through fine scale analyses and test their alignment with the Rural Development Policy through ANOVA and PCA. The results show that the indicators’ set is significant and robust in depicting the current territorial potentialities and limitations of the Inner Peripheries towards strengthening rural development. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the Inner Peripheries exhibit alignments and misalignments with rural development targets, depending on localities, and exogenous and endogenous characteristics. We find that the Inner Peripheries in Italy need to develop holistic strategies incorporating different Rural Development Priorities, such as increased competitiveness in agriculture and forestry sectors, sustainable use of resources and climate adaptation, which may also contribute to foster territorial cohesion. We argue that strategies with less consideration of environmental and social aspects may be counterproductive for the local development in Inner Peripheries. Performing an ex-ante assessment of the main characteristics of the Inner Peripheries through e.g. the use of the indicators’ framework as proposed, may support the decision-making processes in selecting planning priorities. Considering the large replicability and comparability of the indicators’ set, the findings of the present study are useful to further understand how rural development is considered in territorial strategies for Inner Peripheries in similar contexts in Europe.

中文翻译：

---

意大利农村发展与内陆边缘相结合：支持政策情境化的领土证据

摘要 内部外围是一个基于外围和边缘特征的新概念，与普遍采用的外围地理概念相去甚远。内陆地区是覆盖欧洲农村的脆弱地区，人口减少、经济潜力低下，领土凝聚力薄弱。然而，这些领土对于提供商品和服务以及管理自然和半自然环境极为重要。这种二分法对欧盟范围内的规划提出了一些挑战，特别是在实施农村发展政策方面。因此，当前的规划需要通过考虑内陆地区的当地需求和领土资源来将政策实施置于情境中。以意大利案例为重点，目前工作的主要目的是探讨内缘在多大程度上应对农村发展目标，以提高规划干预的有效性。我们创建并实施了一组背景指标，通过精细尺度分析来描述内周边的领土特征，并通过方差分析和 PCA 测试它们与农村发展政策的一致性。结果表明，这些指标集在描述内周边地区在加强农村发展方面当前的地域潜力和局限性方面具有重要意义和稳健性。此外，我们证明了内部边缘与农村发展目标的一致性和不一致，取决于地方，以及外生和内生特征。我们发现意大利的内陆地区需要制定整合不同农村发展优先事项的整体战略，例如提高农业和林业部门的竞争力、资源的可持续利用和气候适应，这也可能有助于促进领土凝聚力。我们认为，较少考虑环境和社会方面的策略可能会对内陆地区的当地发展产生反作用。通过使用建议的指标框架等方式对内部周边的主要特征进行事前评估，可以支持选择规划优先级的决策过程。考虑到指标集具有较大的可复制性和可比性，