Mountain escape

Mountain flight (also mountain flight ) describes the migration of the population from mountain regions .

causes

Mountain exodus occurs mostly in times of economic restructuring such as modernization in agriculture , industrialization and economic globalization . The cause of the mountain exodus is mainly to be seen in the disadvantage of the mountain areas due to the less favorable natural conditions (climate, distance to the centers and the main communication routes, etc.). Technical progress (better road conditions, railways, tunnels) has also made service companies along the routes of old mountain crossings superfluous.

Young people in particular often move down into the valley or to larger cities because of a lack of jobs and limited cultural and leisure activities in the mountain regions. The result can be the extinction of mountain villages and entire side valleys, referred to in English-language literature as mountain-blight or mountain bleaching ("bleaching of the mountains", in relation to maps of population density).

Mountain exodus and rural exodus

Comparable to the phenomenon of mountain exodus is the migration of the rural population to urban areas, which occurs primarily as rural exodus in economically weak regions of the world .

Situation in the Alpine countries

In the Alpine countries , migration to the favored areas takes place within the mountain regions. Together with the urban exodus of the late 20th century, it leads to a concentration in the suburban settlement areas on the edge of the Alps and the well-developed large valleys, which combine the climatic and infrastructural benefits of the lowlands with the advantages of rural life. The mountain escape mainly covers the side valleys and the altitude, as well as the regions away from the major traffic routes.

Here tourism shows itself to be a powerful economic engine. The traditionally small and medium-sized business structure of countries such as Austria and Switzerland also proves to be involved . Where the product refinement and tertiary sectors are preferred , economic development is less dependent on settlement in the commercial centers and more on traffic connections. There, mountain migration is much weaker (such as in the Traun - Salzach - Inn region, the hinterland of the Alpine foothills ) than in regions that are still primarily agricultural and small-scale business areas or the areas that focus on mining and the following heavy industry (such as the Mur-Mürz- Region ).

In large areas of the Eastern Alps , the trend towards mountain exodus has reversed - albeit not across the board - and the population and economic strength are increasing again there. This is not the case in most of the other mountain regions in Europe (and even more so in third world countries).

see also: Alps #settlement and traffic

Countermeasures

State subsidies with economic subsidies to mountain farmers and companies as well as solidarity payments to administrative units (see for example the Swiss Investment Aid Act ) are used as an antidote . In this context, however, there is the role of the farmer as “caretaker of the cultural landscape” in the sense of a service provider for an urban leisure society .

In some cases the reduction in traditional industries can be compensated for by the development of tourism. This includes the modern profiling of tourism as a vacation on the farm or as gentle tourism in contrast to mass tourism, event tourism instead of stationary infrastructure, the shift from individual tourism to seminar tourism of commercial and private further education, as well as the wellness movement, each one of which is a mountain escape can transform the affected location into a preferred destination.

Another counter-trend is the ecological movement , which affects agriculture and forestry in addition to tourism. It turns the products from economically poorly developed areas into a valuable resource that allows recourse to typical Alpine farming methods (extensive alpine pasture farming , hay feeding , free-range farming , production of seasonal fruits, direct agricultural marketing , etc.).

literature

Werner Bätzing : The current changes in the environment, economy, society and population in the Alps. On behalf of the Federal Environment Agency, funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Berlin 2002 ( web document , pdf, 4.7 MB, on media database, Umweltbundesamt.de)
Monika M. Böck-King: Mountain escape in Vorarlberg . Dissertation University of Innsbruck, 1983
Elisabeth Lichtenberger: The succession from the agricultural to the leisure society in the high mountains of Europe. In: Innsbrucker Geographische Studien 5, Innsbruck, 1979, pp. 401–436 ( web document , pdf)
Harald Uhlig, Hermann Kreutzmann: Persistence and Change in High Mountain Agricultural Systems . In: Mountain Research and Development 15, 3/1995, pp. 199-212
Alfred Wilhelmer: Mountain escape in East Tyrol . Dissertation, University of Innsbruck, 1984
Elisabeth Lichtenberger : The mountain farmers problem in the Austrian Alps. Periods and types of resettlement In: Geography, Volume 19, 1965