Abstract Land take is a process of significant relevance in the countries of European Union (EU). Land take is the “Change of the amount of agriculture, forest and other semi-natural and natural land taken by urban and other artificial land development” ( European Environment Agency, 2013a ). In 2011, the European Commission (EC) put in evidence that an important milestone for the EU should be to reach the goal of no net land take by 2050, and to take under strict control the impact on landtaking processes of the EU policies in the new Structural Funds programming period (2014–2020) (Communication of the EC to the European Parliament COM(2011) 571 of 20.9.2011). In this paper we analyze the Sardinian land-taking process as related to factors which are identified as relevant variables in several studies concerning land take, such as area size, accessibility, proximity to regional and local cities and small settlements, natural risk, proximity to nature conservation areas.