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population, considering the fact that human resource is the main driving force in
maintaining certain area.
7.2 Population as a Precondition for Area Usage
As a result of the powerful and quite intense socioeconomic changes in the last
period, with emphasized industrialization and urbanization of the city centers, and
great migration movements of the population toward bigger attractive settlements
located in the lower regions of the country, there are evident changes which have
happened in the mountain village settlements in the Republic of Macedonia. The
main characteristic of their population-geographical development is the change in
the number of population that lives in the settlements in the mountain areas of the
country. In just a few decades, villages that were once significantly stronger in pop-
ulation and economic structure transform in smaller in population settlements with
impaired age and economic structure of the population, as well as a number of other
problems that question their sustainable development. Those unfavorable changes in
the development of the settlements were confirmed by the statistics of the censuses
of population and households in the second half of the 20th century, as well as by
the numerous scientific and fieldwork done in the area where the mountain villages
are located. From the data presented in the table below we can notice the dynamic
with which the number of the population in the mountain villages has been changing
(Tables 7.1 and 7.2 ).
In 2002, the biggest part of the population or 45.8% lived in the region of Polog,
followed by the Southwest region with 29.2%. Following all census years, it is obvi-
ous that the biggest part of the population in mountain areas was concentrated in the
west part of the Republic of Macedonia. At the same time, contrary to the trend of
decline of population of mountain villages from the other regions, or certain vari-
ations in the Southwest region, the region of Polog after 1953 records an increase.
This increase is partly due to the fact that parallel with the decline of the absolute
number of village population in the other regions, in the region of Polog the gen-
eral part of the population was retained as a result of the high population birth rate,
mostly consisted of Macedonian Albanians.
Table 7.1 Number of the population in mountain villages
Census year
Population total
Basic index
Chain index
1948
164, 937
100
1953
176, 157
106.8
106.8
1961
149, 122
90.4
84.7
1971
128, 850
78.1
86.4
1981
104, 195
63.2
80.9
1994
83, 123
50.4
79.8
2002
74, 453
45.1
89.6
Source: Census of the population and households according settlements 1948-2002
 
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