ALPINE CONVENTION - Convenzione delle Alpi

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Map 4: Population development – Population development in the municipalities
Currently 14.01 million people live in the territory
of the Alpine Convention. Never before have so
many people lived in the Alps. Most of the Alps’
inhabitants reside in the Italian and Austrian Alpine
territories (see table 2).
The years from 1990 to 2007 saw a population
growth of roughly eight percent. This makes development
in the Alpine arc more dynamic than
the EU average (plus five percent; Eurostat 2007).
This has not always been so. Only since the
1970s has population growth in the Alpine arc
been higher than that in the rest of Europe. Only
Austria and Slovenia have a national rate that is
higher than that of the whole of the Convention
Territory. Population development is not equally
distributed among the regions. More than two
thirds of the Alpine municipalities have seen positive
development (see table 3). Positive development
is to be found especially in municipalities
showing prosperous economic growth and located
in lower and easily accessible regions. Moreover,
regions towards the margins of the Alps,
Alpine signals 1
in proximity to the great metropolises, are marked
by positive population dynamics. Corresponding
to the overall European tendency (periurbanisation),
the population of municipalities in the surroundings
of Alpine centres (Bozen/Bolzano,
Innsbruck, Lugano, Trento, Grenoble) is growing.
Stagnation or decrease in population, on the
other hand, can be found in peripheral spaces or
in regions experiencing economic depression. In
the years from 1990 to 2004, 24 percent of the
municipalities in Convention Territory saw declining
population figures (see table 3).
Despite the large number of small municipalities,
there is a certain concentration process noticeable
in the Alpine Arc. More than 73 percent of the
population is concentrated in the 23.7 percent of
municipalities that have more than 2,500 inhabitants.
By contrast, as few as 8.8 percent of the
Alps’ inhabitants live in the approximately 50
percent of municipalities that have less than 1,000
inhabitants. Only 14 municipalities have more
than 50,000 inhabitants.