Although the Alps are beautiful, they make many areas of Austria uninhabitable. Austria's so-called areas of permanent settlement – regions that are cultivated, continuously inhabited, and used for transportation, but do not include forests, Alpine pastures, or barren land – cover only 40% or 35,000 km2 of the country. The great majority of the area of permanent settlement is in the Danube valley and the lowlands or hilly regions north, east, and south of the Alps, where approximately two-thirds of the population lives.