Longitudinal Analysis of Alpine Settlement Geography: The Tegernsee Valley, Bavaria

In this article, land use change in the Tegernsee Valley in Upper Bavaria (Germany) is examined using a longitudinal analysis over 200 years. In doing so, it takes up a study by the Munich geographer Karl Ruppert from 1962. In the Tegernsee Valley, a strong change in land use has already been observed historically. The increaing settlement development can be interpreted as a result of tourism development and it is especially due to the construction of second homes. This paper documents this trend and tries to work out the reasons for the illustrated process, which is similar to what is happening in several Alpine valleys which, for topographical reasons, have scarce permanent settlement space. The methods applied include a GIS-based modelling and reconstruction of settlement development that was supplemented by the evaluation of official statistics and qualitative expert interviews in the sense of a "mixed-methods" approach. Thus, demand- and supply-oriented causes of settlement development can be explained. In addition, the current distribution and structure of second homes in the study area is presented, which was collected through onsite mapping. In this respect, instruments for limiting second homes are critically discussed, also with a comparative view of related management and planning approaches in the neighbouring Austrian and Swiss Alps, where similar frictions exist in dealing with scarce land resources.