A Geographical Map of Sustainability in the Italian Local Systems

This paper is a quantitative application of the ESA model to Italian provinces. ESA model is a framework to describe territorial systems. It grounds on a theoretical scheme called SEST (socio-economic territorial systems), which connects performances of the local system with socio-economic structure, external economies, public/private strategies and territorial governance. ESA model is focused on the three pillars of sustainability: economy, society and environment. Clusters and rankings are defined and enable a comparison with more homogeneous local systems. An analytical description of the development of the Italian systems is outlined through principal component analysis.