A podcast by Zebra. The Artzicwa Podcast. Zebra Podcast. Interviews, background talks and voices from all Alpine countries.
Listen to this and more in the podcast of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps. www.zebra.org. Port slash podcast. Hi there, I am Louise from the Zebra Youth's Council.
In July 2023, we organized a conference around the topic Quality of Life in the Alps, focusing on young people's needs and perspectives. What you will hear today is a unique recollection of impressions from the young generation in the Alps. From Slovenia to France, from cities to remote valleys, let's embark on our Alpine journey. Let's start with an easy question.
How good or bad is the quality of life in your region? Thanks for the question. I am from Thirol. I live close to Innsbruck.
And I have to say that we have quite a high quality of life there. We have the natural surrounding that is important to me to my life. For example, I have it. I live in Crento, which is in Trentino, just south of South Thirol.
I would say it's one of the areas where the quality of life is the highest. Because it's very similar to Australia, it's a slightly rich region. Public transport is quite good. I would like to add something because I come from the very same city.
So also from Trentino, many advantages of living there is that there is a good infrastructure, and especially for biking. There are amazing biking lanes where you can travel by bike without risking your life with cars. But I also think that among the problems, there is the costs of life are pretty high compared to other mountain regions in Italy. In my perspective, from the town where I'm from, the quality of life really depends on your values.
Because the quality of life in the area where I live is really good. Because for me it's really important to have access to water, tap water, to have forest nearby, to have wildlife in the forest. So that's the reason why I consider it a good place with a good quality of life. When talking about quality of life, the first thing that comes up is the quality of infrastructures and services.
Some are missing, some are too expensive, and a lot of them depend on seasonal tourism. According to Excel, term and Sophia, what locals and tourists need is very different. Where I come from, from Trentino, it's a terrific, really terrific region. So we met in winter a region of 10,000 inhabitants, but it's much less during other periods.
The people that live the place are mostly people that want to study, because we don't have any university close to the villages. I'd like to come back to the place, but if I want to work, I will need to live for the region. I would like to add on to what you just said. The way we have developed the mountains in the last years has created this exact problem.
Maybe in Trentino it's more that we have developed a model where the only jobs are working in a hotel or working for tourists. And three months in summer, three months in the winter. And they're not there for the actual people who live there or who could live there. It's like this paradox that we've built these crazy things in the mountains, which are just, which the people who live there cannot afford.
I just wanted to add that we have an amazing example of this paradigm now in Italy where we are preparing to host the next winter Olympics. And so we are going to produce kilometers and kilometers of highways and big roads in pristine environments. So the infrastructure work would be huge, very, very expensive, and the opinions of the people that actually live in the valleys where all of these will be created are not at all capting to consideration. Despite the regional differences, there is one thing that all young people have in common, the need to get an education and find a job.
When speaking even to some of my friends or classmates from high school who even moved away, there is the problems of job diversity. There is sometimes like enough jobs, but the problem is that they're not diverse enough. So if you studied, for example, in Hatoranik or something like this, you can get a job because there are some factories around. But if you're more into like social science or something like this, then this could be an issue.
With the kind of studies I did, I think Wi-Fi makes my life there possible and makes it easier and I don't have to travel that much and I can actually live where I live. Otherwise, I would need to live in a big city. I went to Torino to study, like the city itself is really also beautiful regarding architecture and culture, but what I'm missing is like healthy environment, clean air like I had in Bolzano where I come from and also other services that are also hiking and being in a green environment. I'm also missing that in Torino.
Tom was previously talking about nightlife. For young people, it is an important factor of socialization. Our participants would like to see more municipal support for young people who want to organize events. I think what I have noticed very much is that these young people who organize for parties and so on, they grow up and they become actually quite good in village politics because they know everyone, they know how to interact with the institution.
And so actually I think it should be super supported for young people to throw parties and when older people say, oh the young ones, they just want to have fun and do parties. It's no good. Actually, I think that's the basics of how you start organizing. My perspective from the town where I'm from, like nightlife, it's not really happening, so lots of young people are moving to Ljubljana just because they want to meet other young people and hang out and in my region there is no really spaces to do that.
I would connect to this and to the nightlife problem. When I traveled to Innsbruck for work, I discovered a city that is very similar to Tinto, but also as a really good nightlife and it has the cultural life and activity of a bigger city. So I think maybe we have in mind cities or places in the Alps where we see happening the changes that we would like for our region, I don't know. So do you have in mind some other locations that you traveled to that you thought, oh I would like my city to be like that one?
Or I would like to move there because I think that the quality of life is higher there. When my son was very young, I used to spend long stretches of time in a very small village in the Alps with 25 residents and they were all old people. And I felt extremely lonely. There was not much openness and I didn't have a social circle there.
And that's when I realized that yes I had wonderful landscapes, the silence, the opportunity to go out for wonderful walks, but the social part of me was not fulfilled. And so I think that my definition of good quality of life is having the social opportunities and the ability to move, the right to achieve mobility is key for me. From what I heard of you right now, I have the feeling that quality of life when it comes, for example, for young people who live in mountain regions, it's often a compromise. Either it's the lack of mobility or the lack of work.
Also from my point of view, sometimes the fear of missing out what happens in the big cities, for studying or working and then coming back to you have those factors of quality of life, for example relaxation and the nature. But then for me it's always the fear of missing out. If I'm alone in a village and there's no other young people that's probably not going to keep me there, and I think that I could be in the most beautiful place in the world and if I were alone or had no friends there, I probably wouldn't say. Finally, a very important topic came up multiple times in our discussions.
The difficulties that young people face regarding social and cultural habits in the Alps. It seems like if the Alps want to remain useful and dynamic, these regions will need to introduce more diversity and open mindedness. The younger generation doesn't always seem to be comfortable with the mentality that prevails in rural areas. One thing that really disturbs me about the Alps and the quality of life is I think patriarchy and sexism.
Personally, I really struggle to go back to my village because I know that it's a place where women are not hurt, where there's a lot of sexism going on, you need to live with jokes and so on. That is just annoying. So in that sense, I really liked the city life because for the first time I really had people reacting differently to myself. I thought, oh, okay, this is actually, I started to see what was going on in the more conservative patriarchal system.
So I think this would also need to change because I think a lot of people don't come back because they don't want to live like this. The cities people are more open, also to other cultures, like in a village, if there is someone with different thinking or maybe they even wear different clothes, they are very judgy. This person doesn't feel fine and they usually live in the village. I would like to go on.
I think that is quite interesting to point out the cultural differences between people from mountains and people from cities. Yes, it's true that people from the mountains might be quite judgy. It might be hard to meet them. There's always respect, there's quite a huge family.
Everybody knows everybody. And as a foreigner, it's hard just to meet the people to get in touch. But what I think that is really interesting is that as everybody knows everybody, there's a lot of things that you know the people. It might take some time, but once you know the people, then they will help you when you have troubles.
There's a whole life that is happening in a village and if you're not part of this whole life, it's hard to understand it. But once you need to take the time to meet the people, know what does everybody do, it's a long process. But then there's a kind of magical problem. You have a problem just to ask someone for a solution and they will find you a solution.
I think it's quite an interesting aspect as well. Thank you very much for your attention. This podcast was brought to you by the CIPRA Youth Council and CIPRA International. The CIPRA Youth Council works in ten years for a fair and active participation of young people in the Alps.
If you would like to know more about our work, do not hesitate to visit our website or reach out directly to us. In the description, you will also find the organizations of Tom Axel and Joanna. In their own way, protect our winters, the Austrian Alpine Club and the use for whom participate to the promotion of youth activities and policies in the Alps. I am Luis from the CIPRA Youth Council.
Thank you very much for your attention. A podcast by CIPRA. A podcast by the L'Acee. A podcast by the L'Acee.
The L'Acee. The L'Acee. Interviews, background talks and voices from all Alpine countries. Listen to this and more in the podcast of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps.
www.cipra.org.