Continuing Social Diagnostics in our Living Labs: Focus on Local Residents

Dec 20, 2023

Authors: Véronique Reynier and Mathieu Schoendoerffer (Université Grenoble Alpes)

The first part of the social diagnosis was carried out with our Living Labs’ tourists (link to the article on this topic). Work is continuing with local residents, in the form of semi-structured interviews.

The challenge is to understand how they experience the territory, by analyzing their motivations, representations and practices. We are also interested in their relationship with climate change, their perception of the evolution of their territory (and in particular of the ski area) and the way in which they project themselves into this vision of the future.

In parallel with the interviews, we began analyzing them. A number of themes came to our attention concerning the inhabitants of Saint Pierre de Chartreuse, which we felt would be worth exploring in greater depth. These include for example :

the differing views on the importance of the ski area and its preservation for the future of the region, which seem to vary according to whether or not local residents benefit from the economic spin-offs linked to skiing and, more broadly, according to the place winter sports occupy in their identity building and in their relationship with the territory ;
a social reconfiguration of the area due to the arrival of a new population in search of a better quality of life;
a generally shared awareness of climate change and its impacts, but different visions of the region’s future that coexist, and sometimes diverge, particularly when it comes to desired forms of tourism.
Combining the results of the social diagnosis with those of the socio-economic and environmental diagnosis, and setting up worshops with local stakeholders in early 2024, will enable us to examine these various elements in greater depth, while at the same time contributing to the collective construction of transition scenarios.