Kategorie-Archiv: Publikationen

Settlement Systems in Mountain Regions: A Research Gap?

Cities and their networks play an important role in spatial development. This is true for settlement systems in general, and there is no reason why this should be different in mountain contexts. However, research on this topic is scarce, and it remains a relatively niche topic. In our latest article, we present a scoping review of settlement systems in mountain regions. We reflect on thematic foci, temporal developments, and regional differences in the global scientific debate. The paper is p...

Weiterlesen

Investigating roles beyond size: Small towns in the European Alps

A short new article in the ESPON magazine TerritoriALL: Dominik Bertram and Tobias Chilla reflect on ‘roles beyond size’ of small towns in the European Alps. Providing equitable access to services of general interest (SGI) is an explicit objective of the EU Territorial Agenda 2030. Especially in mountain regions, ensuring fair accessibility to SGI is a significant challenge due to low population density and topographical barriers. The TerritoriALL article refers the concept of Population Catc...

Weiterlesen

Mapping the Scene: Cartographic sketches on the EUSALP cross-cutting priorities

The Swiss Presidency of the EU Alpine Strategy (EUSALP) 2023 has focused on transversal topics and their political relevance. At the end of the presidency, the Annual Forum and the General Assembly took place in Bad Ragaz (19th Oct 2023), where four cross-cutting priorities were discussed: a) Promoting Digitalisation for the Alps, b) Accelerating the Energy Transition for a Carbon-Neutral Alpine Region, c) Promoting a Joint Water Management Transition and d) Boosting Circular Economy. We were...

Weiterlesen

The regional dimension in GPN – Mapping value creation and governance of the Bavarian beer sector

The global beer market is characterised by strong concentration tendencies. In contrast, the Bavarian production system is characterised by a high degree of regionality and value creation. Using the example of Bavarian beer, our new study shows how the value creation of regional production systems goes along with the underlying governance patterns. The governance in production systems has long been approached primarily from a global perspective. Given recent regionalisation debates, we focus ...

Weiterlesen

Grenzraumakademie ’23 – Grenzregionen Deutschlands mit seinen Nachbarländern

  Am 20./21. April 2023 fand in Berlin die ‚Grenzraumakademie‘ statt. Diese Veranstaltung brachte ca. 130 Gästen aus den Grenzregionen Deutschlands und den Nachbarstaaten in den Austausch mit Expertinnen und Experten verschiedener Politikbereiche und -ebenen.   Die Ver­anstaltung war durch ein Forschungsprojekt initiiert: Das Projekt CoBo ‚Cohesion in Border Regions‘ wird von der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg und der Universität St. Gallen bearbeitet (Januar 2021 bis Dezember ...

Weiterlesen

How to overcome the ‘size problem’ of the Alpine settlement system?

The Alpine settlement system is of key relevance for sustainable development in the mountain region. However, maps on the European scale indicate almost no cities in the Alps but only a few small towns. The Alpine region seems to be an ‘empty’ space (see, e.g. Atlas for the Territorial Agenda 2030). We argue that a differentiated mapping approach should involve medium and small settlements in mountain regions, as they have a high functional importance for the surrounding area.   Our r...

Weiterlesen

9. Alpenzustandsbericht zum Thema „Alpine Towns“

Welche Rolle spielen Städte und das alpine Siedlungssystem für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung der Alpen? Dieser Frage geht der 9. Alpenzustandsbericht (RSA9) zum Thema „Alpine Towns“ nach. Tobias Chilla, Dominik Bertram und Markus Lambracht sind die Autoren des analytischen Berichts (Part 1: Facts, Maps and Scientific Debates) – der ergänzt wird durch einen Szenarien-Teil (Part 2: Five Pictures of the Future) und politische Überlegungen (Four Postulates of Sustainable Urban Development). Di...

Weiterlesen

Roles beyond size? Investigating polycentricity and accessibility of small towns in the Alps

Fair accessibility to services of general interest is a considerable challenge in mountain regions due to low population density and morphological context (see, ESPON Alps2050). However, the centrality debate has hardly taken morphology into account, even though mountain areas require a specific form of spatial organization. A lower level of accessibility leads either to longer distances and travel times or (in the better case) to increased service supply in smaller settlements. Our recently ...

Weiterlesen

Innerdeutsche Vernetzung von Grenzregionen – welche Optionen bestehen?

Auf der Bundesebene haben die Grenzräume mit Beteiligung Deutschlands in jüngerer Zeit zunehmend größere Aufmerksamkeit bekommen, insbesondere im Zuge der Bemühungen um gleichwertige Lebensverhältnisse. Am 16. und 17. Mai 2022 hat die AG Regionalentwicklung in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat den Workshop ‚Innerdeutsche Vernetzung von Grenzregionen‘ in Berlin durchgeführt (Foto: Dirk Enters). Durch eine bessere Vernetzung der Grenzregionen mit deutscher Betei...

Weiterlesen

Reflecting on border regions with ‚institutional mapping‘

Institutional mapping combines institutional information and visualisation techniques. Our team has worked with this approach for several years now (e.g. ESPON ACTAREA 2017, Chilla et al. 2012). Now we published a new paper that a) describes the state of art in institutional mapping and b) does so with the example of German INTERREG VA programmes. Chilla, T. & M. Lambracht (2022): Institutional mapping of cross-border cooperation. INTERREG programme analyses with KEEP data, European Plan...

Weiterlesen