Connectivity and geographic specificities

September 2022

As energy prices rise, mobility becomes increasingly more expensive. This affects in particular areas where people need to travel longer distances to get to work or cover their daily needs. In other words, geography matters.

For that reason, we went back to an internal exercise we run at Spatial Foresight in 2019 to see how connectivity features affect different types of territories with geographical specificities, mainly mountain areas, islands and sparsely populated areas. In many regards the rationale still holds today.

Today´s growing interdependencies between places in economic, social and environmental regards translate into a growing connectivity of people and enterprises in Europe. People but also things (e.g. Internet of Things) are increasingly more connected through various digital channels and through improved infrastructure and means of physical transport. In particular when it comes to physical transport, energy costs, environmental concerns and sustainable transport play an important role.

There is a risk that increasing connectivity benefits – in relative terms – more those places that have already good connectivity than others, and thus further accelerate economic and demographic concentration tendencies. This risk is further accelerated by increasing energy prices and transport costs. Therefore, geography might matter again more in the context of increasing connectivity costs, as it might be particularly challenging for various mountain areas, islands and sparsely populated areas.