Alpine Metropolis. Towards a New Partnership Between Towns and Mountains?

This issue encourages us to reopen the discussion on the relation between towns and mountains, in light of metropolisation.  Why reopen the discussion? Nearly 20 years ago now, the Revue de Géographie Alpine (which had not yet been renamed Journal of Alpine Research) devoted two successive issues to the Alpine town. The relation between towns and the Alps was broached in two different ways: on the one hand, through Alpine identity, and on the other, through economic development. The economic angle made it possible to examine the effect of milieu and in particular the mountain morphology through the prism of polarisation models. It led to a mixed observation, showing that though it was possible to outline “specific Alpine factors, such as relief, traditions, accessibility and weak population density” (Perlik, 1999), the trajectory of these towns did not differentiate them from other similarly sized entities in Europe.  The second volume broached the representations and discourse leadi...

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