In Casavatore 91.8% of the land is sealed. It has been losing people for years — concrete arrives where demand has already gone.
Casavatore, on the northern edge of Naples, has paved over 91.8% of its land. That is the highest share in the country: barely a tenth of the ground is left open. And yet Casavatore is not growing. It has been shedding residents for years.
Soil sealing in Italy is usually told as the by-product of cities spreading because people are arriving. The municipal figures say otherwise. Around Naples the building continues where demographic demand has already turned. Concrete without extra people.
Share of land consumed, 2024. Source: DatiItalia on ISPRA data.
Portici is the extreme. On just 4.49 square kilometres live fifty-one thousand people, one of the highest population densities in Italy. But the peak is long gone: in 1981 Portici held 80,410 residents; today it holds 51,213. Four decades of decline. And still 68.9% of the town is sealed.
The same scene repeats next door. Arzano has sealed 83.4% of its land, Casoria 70.9%. Cardito, Frattaminore, Frattamaggiore, Torre Annunziata: all above 70%, all losing residents over the past six years. The soil runs out before the people do.
It is not universal. In Lissone, in Brianza, 71.5% is sealed, but there the population is still rising. Melito di Napoli grows too, slightly. Where concrete tracks a rising population, it has a logic. Across most of the Naples belt that logic is missing.
Population at the censuses, 1951-2026. Source: DatiItalia on ISTAT data.
There is an Italy that genuinely emptied out and sealed almost nothing. Carrega Ligure, in the Alessandria Apennines, had 1,351 residents in 1951. Today it counts 76: a 94.4% collapse, the steepest in the country. Sealed land there is 0.98%. Next to nothing.
Same story in Macra, in the Maira valley, and Ingria, in the Canavese: near-total depopulation, untouched ground. These are the same places at the top of the old-age rankings. The mountains emptied without leaving asphalt. The Naples belt empties while leaving it everywhere.
The ISPRA figure measures how much soil is sealed, not when it was sealed. From these numbers we cannot say how much concrete was added in the last year alone in each town: that detail, municipality by municipality and year by year, is not in the public series we use. What we can say is where the land is already saturated while the population retreats.
Each municipality shaded by share of land consumed. Source: ISPRA.