Navigating mountains: topography, accessibility, and socioeconomic patterns in the European Alps

This paper examines the link between topography, accessibility, and socioeconomic development in the European Alps. Using fine-scale GIS analyses combined with regional statistics on socioeconomic indicators, we performed a correlation analysis. Our findings suggest that while topography affects accessibility, it does not directly determine socioeconomic development. This holds true for both inner-Alpine and peri-Alpine municipalities. From a spatial development perspective, our findings highlight that accessibility alone cannot ensure positive socioeconomic development dynamics. We conclude that in mountainous areas, socioeconomic development must be discussed in the context of broader themes, such as economic path dependencies and other sectoral specificities.