Walser Alps - modernity and tradition in the heart of Europe
The Walser settlements area -  a laboratory to experience a post-industrial sustainable Alpine society in a bottom-up process
The minority of Walser settle dispersed over six countries in the heart of Europe. Most of them suffer under economic disadvantage, but have conserved traditional rural knowledge.
The Walser Alps project aims to experience - as a pilot action based on the Agenda 21 process - the transfer from a pre-industrial to a sustainable competitive post-industrial society integrating youth.
Landscape is the link between, on one hand, spatial development and, on the other hand, culture. Culture is a key feature for minorities to define and defend their characteristics, specificities and sustainability (Agenda 21). Landscape is a concrete, appropriate medium to integrate youth.
The method consists of confronting images to let the Walser population face the "mirror" of their own social features. Matching interior and exterior images can raise consciousness to forecast future developments.
Those experiences will serve for a spatial planning tool and for an exchange of best practice with other minorities.