engleski

The Relation between Traffic Accessibility and Depopulation of Žumberak

Žumberak is mountainous rural micro region on the border between Croatia and Slovenia. In spite of proximity of Zagreb and Karlovac the traffic accessibility of Žumberak is inadequate for modern standards. The mountainous terrain and bad and obsolete traffic infrastructure are main factors of low traffic accessibility. Žumberak has been a depopulation region for last hundred years. The demographic breakdown of Žumberak took place in the second half of 20th century. That period was marked in Croatia by urban based industrialisation on the one side and the deagrarisation and deruralisation on the other. The agriculture in Žumberak was traditional and autarchic. The significant modernization of agriculture and human-geographic transformation never took place in Žumberak and that was one of the reasons why the people from Žumberak had no alternative than to find the jobs outside of agriculture, mostly in urban centres. Since it was, due to the low traffic accsessibility, difficult to commute on daily basis form Žumberak to near by towns, where it was possible to get a job, the only alternative for the people from Žumberak was to emigrate (move to towns). Besides of that, as the result of modernisation in general, the life in traffic isolated mountainous region, such as Žumberak, became inattractive and that was another reason that has caused the emigration. In modern time, the eventual revitalisation of Žumberak isn't possible without significant improvement of the traffic accessibility. The aim of the paper is to research the relation between traffic accessibility and depopulation processes in Žumberak in the period 1961 – 2011.

Žumberak; traffic accessibility; depopulation; emigration; revitalisation

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