Demographic Changes and Urban Sprawl in Two Middle-Sized Cities of Campania Region (Italy) - A Measurement in the Cities of Benevento and Avellino

This paper aims to show a measure of the spatial expansion of the buildings in inland areas of Campania and, through this, an analysis of the most complex phenomenon of urban sprawl. This work is a pilot study aiming to test a research methodology. Thus, at this stage, the area of investigation was restricted to two medium-sized cities: Benevento and Avellino. So, the Author proposes to investigate whether there is a sprawl in this particular context, in line with the European trend, and proposes a physical and anthropic correlation index between the changes of the built areas, seen as a measure of the taken land, and the demographic changes, to analyze the phenomenon of urban sprawl in relation to housing demand. Therefore, for examined urban areas, the Author analyzes the correlation between the change in population density between the years 2001 and 2011, extracted from the Census of the population at the fractional scale, and the change in the building coverage ratio extracted from the RTC Regional Technical Cartography in 1998 and in 2005.