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ATLAS OF THE CARPATHIAN MACROREGION Home | Research departments | Sustainable Development | Institute for Regional Development and Location Management | Projects | Introduction Heterogeneous and contrasting features make the Carpathian Macroregion a very interesting study area. In addition to the Austrian regions of Burgenland, Lower Austria and the Vienna area, it includes the entire territory of the Slovak Republic, a large part of Romania and some regions of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia and Ukraine. While 3.4 million inhabitants of the region live in Austria, and a similar figure populates the former Yugoslav Republic of Serbia, almost 48 million people live in the former communist states (see Table 1 and Figure 1), which in the past two decades have undergone major political and economic changes. Tab. 1: Area and population of the Carpathian Macroregion (2004).
Source: Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia: Eurostat, 2004; Serbia: Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, 2005; Ukraine: State Statistics Committee of Ukraine, 2004.
Fig. 1: NUTS3 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics that at level 3 corresponds to provinces).
Objectives and methods The major aim of this international project is to draw up an Atlas to illustrate the main structural, demographic, socio-economic and cultural features of the Carpathian Macroregion, while pointing out any differences due to the geography or the legal and political framework of the countries involved. The primary intended purpose of the Atlas is therefore to provide a description of the main current trends in the Macroregion and to attempt some possible explanations. Since the work is addressed to a variety of readers, decision makers, students and an interested public, the Atlas uses a simple, succinct style. Data which support the maps have been harmonised, in order to allow comparability. In some cases this implied analysing the definitions used by national statistical institutes. Data were then grouped together in the form of indicators, such as the population density (inhabitants per kmē), the ageing index (the ratio between population aged over 64 and population aged under 15 multiplied by 100) or the tourism intensity (tourist arrivals per 1000 inhabitants). The GIS software was used to generate maps. Structure The Atlas includes three sections: "Geography", "Population and Culture" and " Economy and Cooperation". Each section contains some chapters. The "Geography" section for instance is comprised of the following chapters: - Carpathian Macroregion; - Natural and anthropogenic risks; - Nature conservation; - Land use; - Cultural (man-made) landscapes. Each chapter contains one or more thematic maps, processed on the basis of data supplied by Eurostat or national or regional statistical institutes of the Carpathian countries. Each map that illustrates a specific phenomenon at NUTS 2 (regional) or NUTS3 (provincial district) level is accompanied by a descriptive comment, that points out specificities and noteworthy characteristics. Since in mountain areas major differences may occur also within short distances, a closer look at specific points of interest was taken, zooming on LAU2 or LAU1 level (municipalities or aggregate municipalities), as shown in Figure 4. Contents Almost 20 years after the deep political-economic changes that caused the planned economy to be replaced by market economy, the former countries of the Warsaw Pact now display a diversified economic structure, marked by richer areas, namely the metropolitan districts of These are easily accessible areas, well connected to the European and international communication networks, characterised by intense flows of capital, information, people, technologies, trade and business activities. In Many peripheral rural areas experience a radically different situation. There, scarce investments and high unemployment engender a vicious circle of economic stagnation and depopulation. The latter, in the poorer areas is often linked to 'selective' outbound migration flows, whereby younger and better skilled people leave the region to seek employment in other markets. That is what happened in the Serbian districts of Zajecarski, Pomoravski and Branicevski, which in 2005 had one of the highest ageing indexes of the Carpathian Macroregion (figure 2), clearly the result of massive outbound migration flows of the younger cohorts after the political and economic crisis of the 1990s.
Fig. 2: Old age index (2005).
In addition to the economic and demographic differences the Carpathian Macroregion is also very diverse in terms of infrastructures, heritage and cultural sites, ethnic origins and nationalities, languages and religions. As for the latter aspect for instance, whereas in the Polish regions the majority of the population follows the Catholic Church, in the Czech regions half of the population professes to be 'non-religious, agnostic or atheist', while the Romanian and Serbian areas are strongholds of the Orthodox Church (figure 3).
Fig. 3: Religious structure (2002-2006).
Also the landscape is diversified. 190,000 kmē, i.e. 40% of the territory of the Carpathian Macroregion is occupied by the Carpathian Mountains, the most extensive mountain range in Europe after the |
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