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Italy is one of the countries with the greatest historic heritage in the world, but also one of the most seismic. In this context an earthquake can cause significant damage. Usually, the vulnerability of a building is verified with indepth and expensive structural assessment, without considering spatial relations and local context. In this study a method is proposed for the assessment of Territorial Seismic Vulnerability, based on both building characteristics and morphological and spatial parameters. It is an urban-scale approach that allows an objective classification of buildings using an economical procedure. The method, based on the development of a geographical Multiple Criteria Decision Making model and on the participatory approach of the Analytic Hierarchy Process, has been tested in the study area of Garfagnana (Tuscany). The model can be a useful support tool for urban planning, allowing the optimization of public resources in the most vulnerable areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the relationship between urban spatial structure and land use fragmentation in the Functional Urban Area (FUA) of Milan to understand if and how the urban morphology influences the patterns of land use at the metropolitan scale. Using Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis, we find that the spatial structure of the urbanisation in the study area follows the traditional monocentric distribution in the south while multi-centricity characterises the north to the largest extent. Findings suggest clearly that different urban spatial structures lead to diverse patterns of land use. In particular, it appears that the degree of discontinuity of residential areas is lower in the presence of secondary sub-centres compared to the mono-centric distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]