. : Bad Füssing: background
Bad Füssing
The »niederbayerische Bäderdreieck« is situated in a rural area which is generally described as economically less developed. In the last decade, however, the structure and development of this »Bäderdreieck« has initiated important economic effects on a regional level. The development of health resorts is closely linked with numerous demographic changes which influence on their turn the economic and social life of the three spas.
This survey tries to illustrate the latest demographic changes connected with the development of the health resorts from the geographic point of view. In each of the three communities - Bad Birnbach, Griesbach and Bad Füssing - the rise to an officially acknowledged spa has put an end to a mainly negative development of the population structure. Moreover it has partly brought about an increase of population as a result of migration. The effects, however, are not exclusively positive. Since the opening of the health facilities the mobility of the population involved has enormously increased in the three communities of the »Bäderdreieck«. The selective character of this mobility has partly caused essential changes with regard to the population structure of Bad Birnbach, Griesbach and Bad Füssing. The specific mobility of young people who are looking for a job and the search of older people for retirement homes have a decisive impact on the population structure and on the appearance of the villages. In the very young spas like Bad Birnbach and Griesbach the population structure has been gradually filled up with young people, who work in hotels and in the medical sector, during the last period of investigation whereas meanwhile the population structure of Bad Füssing shows a kind of Stagnation on a certain level. The obvious reason is the Saturation of the labour market and therefore Bad Füssing's population is now open to a continuous exchange.
However the migration of older people who have chosen Bad Füssing as their retirement village is steadily going on, although it is not comparable with the range of the early seventies. Even among old people there is a considerable number of them who may possibly move away, but for completely different reasons. This tendency is slightly modified according to the different areas where most of the people come from and this tendency differs from spa to spa. The dominance of the senior people and the high rate of foreigners are the two demographic aspects which show important differences between the three health resorts. In the meantime Bad Füssing has developed into a retirement village with an extremely high rate of senior people among its inhabitants. This is mainly due to the great extent of the migration process and the long dufation of it. This phenomenon is not yet of any importance in Bad Birnbach and Griesbach, the two younger spas. The three health resorts, however, have the dominance of foreign people in common although there are slight differences. Generally speaking, Bad Birnbach is influenced by the area of Munich, whereas Griesbach is influenced by people who move away from other Bavarian agglomerations. But the new inhabitants of Bad Fussing come predominantly from the west of Germany. The phenomenon of retirement homes in spas is unseparably linked with the , problem of second homes. This problem is increasingly turning to be a burden for the community of Bad Fussing. Bad Birnbach and Griesbach do not face this phenomenon yet. Apartment houses, nearly complete rows of streets in certain districts of Bad Füssing-Safferstetten are owned by people whose first residence is in other towns and communities of West-Germany. That is why a considerable percentage of flats in Bad Fussing is unused most of the time (at least officially), but there is still a great demand for flats despite the enormous building activities and the fact that the price of ground have reached a level which is as high as in a large city.
Obviously, all in all the schedule which is the basis for the development of the spas of Bad Birnbach and Griesbach seems to have a positive effects on the demographic structures. In the oldest of the health resorts, however, the people in authority have tried only for the last decade to cope with the demographic consequences of an uncontrolled and stormy phase of development and an early conception of a health resort which does no longer meet the requirements of today.
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