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 Catchment Intensities (PCI). This approach combines demographic and accessibility analyses at a fine spatial granularity. In the Alps, the size of a settlement does not determine its urban functions. Small mountain towns often have to provide more functions than peri-Alpine suburban areas. This comes along with a series of policy implications for Alpine spatial development.
The findings are based on a research paper that received funding from the ESPON 2020 Cooperation Programme within the framework of the initiative to support young researchers and dissemination of ESPON results among the scientific community. The underlying analysis builds on the ESPON Alps2050 project and results of the 9th Report on the State of the Alps, coordinated by the Swiss Presidency of the Alpine Convention.
Selected research on Alpine spatial development:
Lambracht, M. (2024). Spatial development in the European Alps: Topographic Potential Area as a basic indicator for policy debates. Papers in Applied Geography, 10(1), 81-88. https://doi.org/10.1080/23754931.2023.2264289
Dominik Bertram & Tobias Chilla (2023): Polycentricity and accessibility in mountain areas: the Alpine case. European Planning Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2022.2145874
Bertram, D., Chilla, T., & Lambracht, M. (2023). The Alpine settlement system: capturing relevance beyond size. Journal of Maps, 19(1), 2164229. https://doi.org/10.1080/17445647.2022.2164229
Chilla, T., & Heugel, A. (2022). Cross-border commuting dynamics: patterns and driving forces in the Alpine macro-region. Journal of borderlands studies, 37(1), 17-35. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2019.1700822