Convergences Versus Gaps. Capital Axiology as a Cognitive Pattern of Territorial Fragility

The Italian territory is characterised by significant and persistent disparities. South of Italy is the most backward region in the euro area, having suffered severely from the Great Crisis of 2008 and more recently from the Covid-19 crisis and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Although it is characterised by strong inter-regional disparities, coastal areas and rural or inland areas, it has great potential. It is populated by a third of Italy’s population and characterised by a productive fabric that could generate positive effects for the country. The backwardness problem of the Southern Italy has been a national priority, as evidenced by the policies adopted to support the development of these depressed areas. The implementation of a cohesion policy aimed at territorial rebalancing should be based on a systemic vision of the problem, at least at the regional level. A systemic view of the problem can be developed on the basis of appropriate knowledge support. To this end, the study proposes a cognitive model on a regional scale, based on fuzzy clustering, applied to the case study of the region of Sicily, developed in the axiological perspective of the forms of territorial capital, with the aim of identifying gaps and convergences on a regional and infra-regional scale. The region of Sicily is considered in this study as representative of South of Italy. At the regional level, the cognitive model showed less significant gaps for human, economic, natural and environmental capital than for urban capital and, as expected, deep gaps for infrastructural capital.