Demographics of a surviving Austria-Hungary (again)

[Fehérvári]

What will the AH Media would look like in TL? Entertainment Media such as books TV shows and animations novels all those kind of stuff in the Modern AH today

Animations might become a big thing in the country, since that would allow the evasion of potential language problems between actors. Dubbing or subbing an animation could be seen easier than always finding the right actor that knows the right language(s).

I’m especially intrigued what a lot of these cities with 1.5-2x the population would be like in the global consciousness…

That's certainly something that interests me too. Imo Triest, Lemberg, Szegedin, Temeschwar and Fiume would see the largest jump in international recognition compared to OTL. When people would talk about Europe, Vienna and Budapest just as quickly would come to one's mind as London, Paris or Rome.

It seems like opportunities for a bilingual education would be unparalleled. Plus a relatively lower cost of living and more pleasant climate is attractive for students.

Budapest is already flooded with Erasmus students. I can't even imagine how things would look like if its universities would have retained/developed world renown worthy of their historical legacies...
And the same goes for other cities too!

It seems like Canada would have, proportionally, the largest "Austrian" diaspora in the world, excepting potentially recent economic migrants to neighbouring countries in Europe. (Again, also a multilingual constitutional monarchy where Catholicism is the largest religion, Canada may seem more familiar than the USA).

Could this perhaps affect Danubian-Canadian relations in some way?

Maybe instead of France, Canada could have a "Hungarian" leader elected ITTLxd

Oooh plus nearby oilfields means plastics...so mathematics plus plastics equals...silicon valley of AH?

The idea of a Galicia heavily invested in R&D strikes me as simultaneously cursed and blessed. Still, Vienna appears to me as a more likely candidate to be Danubia's silicon valley-equivalent. Being the largest city and the capital, the brains are already there, and the nearby Matzen Oil Field could also provide more than enough black gold.

I have always felt that the AH army was pretty much the same quality as the British in WWI, their main problems are that they are compared to the Germans and because of the multicultural nature of their empire they had less room for failure and opportunity to improve than the British without it having large domestic consequences.

Multiculturalism was less of a problem, the real headache was the smaller war production capacity and the more labor-intensive economy. ...and ofcourse the lack of pre-war preparation. Mostly the last one.

The Austro-Hungarian Army had to be rebuilt twice during the war: once in 1915 and once after the Brusilov Offensive. That's quite impressive in itself if you ask me, it's a proof of Austro-Hungarian capabilities and resilience. However had the country actually prepared for the war prior, these interwar rebuilds could have been expansions and enhancements instead!

For the pentarchical structure, do each of the five lands maintain separate citizenship, as Austria and Hungary did?

Initially that would be the case, but at some point a supplementary common citizenship would be introduced as well. My greatest source of inspiration was the EU, you see.

 

[durante]

Could this perhaps affect Danubian-Canadian relations in some way?

Maybe instead of France, Canada could have a "Hungarian" leader elected ITTLxd

Well the interesting thing about settlement in Canada was the way it was undertaken, with ethnic block settlements.

Settlers from the same region (often the same villafe) would be settled in a township (64,000 acres or 100 sections, a standard farm being 1/4 section).

On the Canadian Prairies, Germans and UkrainiNs from Austria-Hungary formed the largest number of ethnic block settlements, although there were significant numbers of Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian ethnic block settlements as well.

The Polish and Romanian settlers were primarily from Austria-Hungary (and of course the Hungarians), but the Germans had more diverse origins, often immigrating from the USA or even Russia.

But again, the "Austro-Hungarian" blocks were all settled near each other - so a primarily Ukrainian district would also contain Polisj Hungarian and Romanian blocks, as well as German Catholic ones, and anecdotally there were Slovaks distributed liberally in the Hungarian and Ukrainian blocks as well. And Jews, in small numbers, scattered throughout.

(Czechs seem to have been more likely to immigrate to the USA, probably because during this period Canada was less industrialized the Czechia was.)

So all this means that not only were Austria-Hungary's ethnicities well represented on the Canadian prairies, the ethnic diversity is literally recreated and mini "Austrias" formed.

During WWI when recent immigrants from AH were rounded into internment camps it helped create a supra ethnic identity as well.

In Ukraine: A History, Subtelny argues that much of the Canadian prairies was likely to have become majority Ukrainian without WWI, so it would be interesting to see if increased immigration could truly turn the Canadian prairies into "New Austria-Hungary", I'm somewhat reminded of the relationship between Italy - without colonies of her own in America - and Argentina, where the majority of the population claim Italian ancestry.

IOTL, Ukrainians in particular have held high office on the Canadian prairies, but there is no reason why, with an existing AH and a supra ethnic identity "I'm a Danubian-Canadian", as a larger block they coulsnt influence politics more.

 

[CASSICTOR2]

Perhaps this would be completed:

The Good Soldier Švejk - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Probably a movie version or two made, and of course the flopping Oscar bait English language version "Shvike", from 2002 (or something).

Honestly there One thing that will be Amazing to discuss about AH Media and that is wait for it... . . . .. . . . . Stop Motion Animation.
Now you're probably ask yourself why are we talking about Stop Motion in this TL thread?

Well I think in this scenario where is Eastern Europe is not Destroyed by WWII then Russia and by extension the whole Eastern bloc Animation industry will be alot more popular and in the Mainstream.

Think about it without the devastating cost of Soviet Communism, WWII and the declined of 90s the Animation industry from EE will not be poorer and cheaper than in OTL as they not suffered from restriction and decline by the Communist State. Decorators artist who immigrates from Eastern Europe will likely not migrate in the first place and likely stays.

One saying that is very interesting to discuss about and that is stop motion animation because stop motion originated from Russia ( specifically Lithuania ) where they were very growing talent with stop motion animation and many people who are geniuses, pioneers of that were in Russia.

Meaning no Communism no WWII and no declined of 90s meaning Stop Motion will be more associated with Eastern Europe than in America & Western Europe.

Meaning stop motion animation will be more produced and made in Eastern Europe akind like Asia with Anime ( Both had notable countries like Russia and Japan who produced the most of animation in the region )

TL Stop motion industry will be mostly of or at least half produced in Eastern Europe unlike are OTL.

Instead of Portland being the Capital of Stop Motion, it is Kaunas will be Capital of Stop Motion in the World

I even make two posts about this before In a other thread

They also one thing that we haven’t talked about, Russian Animation.

Russian animations are obscure and were Restricted by Soviet Government in OTL., that nobody know about its, plus Many Russian animators move because of the Soviets revolution and restriction that caused him to move out.

Wikispa Russian Animated

In this scenario that never happened and many of them will likely expand and even maybe spread around Russian Animation to the west and even to America, Plus many of the Russian artist wouldn’t died and leave because World Wars, Soviet KGB and The economy going down the toilet as in OTL.

Russia before WW1, was know for its Growing Stop Motion industry and its still have to this Day but as big as before the Russian Revolution.

So if Kaiserreich333 and I go to TL Russia, there’ll be a lot of stop motion shows and films that were made and produced by Russia. Hell maybe it will be the Russian equivalent of anime and will be ship around the world especially in Europe likely in Poland and AH.

So expect to be Many Stop Motion and Animated films and shows in Russia Media and Foreign Films, maybe even TL Russia will be “Capital of Stop Motion Animation”

These many works will export to Europe 🇪🇺and America 🇺🇸 like with Anime and just like Anime will Massively popular of Russia animation.

Russian animated films 🎥 will be Popularized and Famous as French / Japanese animated industry.

what do you think of this mate?

Yeah Russia in this TL will have Popularized and Booming Animated Industry. These TL Russians will highly be Prideful and Proud for their Booming Animation Media When Especially That Mother Russia is Leading the Stop Motion Industries.

Me too, I Love and and Inspired of what Stop Motion films and especially shows in that style. Many and A lot of Stop Motion films 🎥 with decorated and more acclaimed will be made in Russia 🇷🇺.

I remember you had to realize Russia have a lot more people than US and also have Great Economy like the Top of the World, that means Many shows and films 🎥 will may be Stop Motion to be Produced like Bollywood from India.

So expect Many Stop Motion films and show be Russian and a lot more produce in TL than OTL, Kaiserreich333

Now that's my case what do you think of it guys

 

[CASSICTOR2]

Is anyone still here?

 

[CASSICTOR2]

Me on this Thread

 

[Othala]

I promised I'd take a closer look later on...
So, it's later now.

1.) Concerning populations: Changing municipal borders

This is the one factor that makes this quite difficult to pin down. Speaking from a specifically Austrian (as in OTL Republic of Austria) perspective, annexing or fusing municipalities is always a very emotional political topic. And the municipal borders go back well over a century, let alone the even older church parishes.
There are some areas that over the last century and a bit more saw repeated municipal border changes. Others less so. Generally more happened in the East, less so in the West. Carinthia, Upper Austria and Burgendland were quite common places for such to happen, Styria was the last Land to have a significant one about a decade ago (that more than enough local people still refuse to recognise) and then there was the big chunk that happened during the Nazi time.


2) The cities

2.1) And that brings us Back again to Innsbruck:

1919 Innsbruck was significantly smaller than today. In fact, it was Innsbruck proper, Wilten and Pradl - an area that currently only has around 70k inhabitants. Compare that again to the 53k number you dug up for 1910.
The expansions of the city to it's current borders happened during the Nazi years.
So depending a bit on socio-economic factors - 1910 Innsbruck borders might hold as few as 50k, or maybe up to 90k at a guess. While even in those areas there are open areas - remember that the city is pretty constrained by mountains - those areas are pretty much too steep to reasonably build.
Same goes for open areas in the expansion area - steep areas maybe good for single family homes, proper built up areas, the airport and the industrial and or big box commercial areas... Some slack in there, but not too much.
Especially if one considers the natural disasters: a good chunk of the airport exclusion area is designated flood land. And make no mistake, if flooded, the roll field will end up wet too. To be honest, Innsbruck already has too little area for the Inn to expand out - the city undergoes evacuation every couple years - including things like the university library (with the Inn visible from the new reading room), Ferdinandeum, etc.
And that's not even going into the Sill and other tributaries on the of the city: once the drivers of early- and even proto-industrialisation with water power, now they regularly flood streets when there is heavy rain in the mountains.
And not to forget: Innsbruck is the only city world wide that has to maintain avalanche warnings for core parts of the city.
Yeah, building went a bit overboard in at least some parts - though the last mayor avalanche damage was in the 1930s IIRC.

So aside from maybe Vill and Igls, there's not too much expansion potential in current the OTL borders. Because the areas that might be expanded in have commercial use, cannibalising jobs for population. Maybe the airport - but then you'd have to find an alternative to place on in the west of the country - maybe Bozen on a North-South axis - but that one will run into similar constraints by the mountains as Innsbruck itself has. And be less accessible to people coming from Vorarlberg - who'd then be even more tempted to take business over the border to Switzerland and Germany than they already are OTL.

If there is an impetus to annex more territory, Völs and Rum should work out without too much trouble. Make that OTL another 17k inhabitants. The smaller ones on the slopes of the southern mountain chain should also be relatively easily annexed: Ampass, Aldrans, Lans, Natters and Mutters - make that another 10k.
From there it gets more difficult - Thaur would work - but be aware that that's not good building ground in between to make it contiguous - too steep for anything but single family housing or similar size constrained builds. Make that another 4k - with maybe expansion for another 1-3k there as space currently used agriculturally.

From there there are two problems: how contigous do you want to be: Götzens, Axams, Kematen, Zirl, up into the Stubai. Non of them should be too difficulty aside from the locals wanting or not wanting the annexation. Hall on the other hand is a different beast: with a long tradition and even at times having been significantly more important that Innsbruck - they might have what it takes to gather more than just local resistance to annexation.

And that's not even going into the one big economic factor in Innsbruck directly: The University. To the OTL 133k inhabitants, you have 34k students.

OTL it was one of the 'big three' existing in Austria. It was well regarded by German students as well - waxing and waning a bit with the decades - but different borders might effect it's growth. There's not going to be an impetus for South Tyrolean students to attend there - because there's no South Tyrol. No Brenner border, therefore no exclusive agreement with the Italian government. There might be an agreement in place with Luxembourg anyway, but who knows, might be butterflied. Students from Upper Austria and Salzburg - already contested with Vienna and maybe or maybe not as OTL a newly expanded Salzburg university (1960s they got more than a theological faculty) - they might TTL attend the German language university in Prague instead too. Or even more exotically, go to Lemberg or similarly far away. German after all would likely get one reasonably far even there.

Now of course, there might be a different development too: depending on how Germany develops in TTL - Innsbruck might find itself with more German students than even OTL.

Moving on:

2.2.) Vienna: I think I agreed more or less with 4m in the last thread. Depending a bit on the borders, it might be a bit tight to fit them in - you'd rather avoid the worst excesses of residential high rises I'd assume. On the other hand, the 'Red Vienna' with it's social residential construction will not exist TTL - it is the capital city, residence of the Monarch after all. Can't have the socialists rule it, right?
That might play into expanding borders. OTL Vienna was removed from the county of Lower Austria pretty quickly - leading to a deep socialist-conservative divide between the two counties. There were ideas about Vienna annexing the remaining heavily industrialised, and therefore red, areas, but those never went through, because they were making good tax revenue to Lower Austria.
The OTL Nazi expansions of Vienna do make sense, even in that way, there were more than a few wealthy suburbs annexed in addition to contiguous built up areas. On the other hand, without the problem of power shifts between those two counties - I could also see an expansion to swallow up areas down to Baden (on your list), up to Korneuburg and Klosterneuburg and most of all: probably out into the Marchfeld for those conservative, agricultural voters to keep the mayor nice and conservative.
Considering that the Ballungsraum - smaller in some respects than what I mentioned - has some 3m inhabitants OTL - it staying the capital of the Empire - we might be dealing with more than 4m in an expanded Vienna. I'd say that 6-8m would be possible, depending on a lot of factors.
Let's not forget the Jewish population of Vienna: OTL by 1938 they numbered some 185k - with less than 10k remaining today. TTL this might be one of the groups that expanded the most of the city population - even OTL there was a steady migration of 'Ostjuden' to the city - from Poland and Russia and also the eastern areas of the Habsburg monarchy.
On the other hand, going by OTL trends - this will also be a population that is strongly assimilating. There were a good number of people who were surprised that they were suddenly 'Jews' in 1938 because their grandparents converted to Catholicism even before they married... (Okay, maybe exaggerating a bit there.)


2.3) Graz is difficult to place. OTL it benefited a lot from migration following both World Wars, as 'German' or 'Austrian' people fled or were driven from their earlier places of residence in the East or South. And TTL it's just a mere stop at the way to the port of the world, at Trieste - not the last big city to the south-east, before the Iron Curtain. Not a place where migration movement naturally stops.
So I'm unsure. I notice you picked an agglomeration population number - 328k over the 292k of the city proper - but unless you add the 'outer agglomeration' number you occasionally find, I doubt you get to the 750k either.
I'd probably go with a growth significantly lower - not the near 5 you picked, but probably more like 3, maybe 3,5.


2.4) Linz will certainly suffer in some ways. It isn't the 'Führerstadt' - it won't get the Herman-Göring-Werke - sorry, Voest and similarly big ticket items just handed to them. Oh, sure, it's the capital of Upper Austria, it's well situated with it's Danube harbour (something that is not that insignificant - TTL without the monarchy falling apart, and without the Iron Curtain, if Romania and Bulgaria are even halfway friendly barge traffic on the river might be ten times what it's OTL) - but it will loose at last some growth to Wels and Steyr as well.
Not to mention without the generous annexations of the Nazis, it might end up slightly smaller in borders than today.

2.5) Salzburg is one that I'd assume could actually grow more. OTL they really messed up with their building codes and building programs. It's often claimed to be the most expensive city in Austria. And sure, if you want to live in the Altstadt between Hohensalzburg and Kapuzinerberg, that will always be true. But in the city itself? More than enough space to expand.
Especially considering that they were pretty sparing with annexations OTL - all of them happening more or less before 1938 - and there are a few more candidates right on the border. So space would be there - if it wasn't for those NIMBY's.
Considering that OTL the agglomeration adds some 210k to the 155k of the city for some total 365k-ish? Depending on how relations to Germany/Bavaria are - border city and all that - Salzburg TTL might exceed your numbers by quite a bit.

2.6) Wiener Neustadt is one of those cities that was for a short moment proposed to be annexed to Vienna - since it's a bit of a distance and deep red, I'd expect it to stay independent TTL too - though for the exact opposite reasoning. Population numbers look okay on first glance and there area few geographical constraints for growth.
Though there will be whining about agricultural land. (Ignore the airports. And the military and firefighting training areas a bit further out. Forestry on flat land? Not sure what you are talking about - think of the food!)

2.7) Trento.
OTL it benefited strongly from the Italian Italianization policy. As in resettlement of Southern Italians and new factories so they have jobs too. TTL however I can see some population drain to a) Italy or b) Trieste. Especially if Trieste gets an Italian or multi-lingual University over Trento. And for a variety of reasons I could see that happening - Germanization of Tyrol and less threat through the cosmopolitan port city than a conservative seat of a Bishopric, for example.

2.8) Klagenfurt and Villach - I'll combine those two.
Villach is the even more important transport - especially rail - node compared to Klagenfurt. In a more rail based economy, and or more population growth prior to demographic transitions compared to OTL, I would see Villach as growing stronger than Klagenfurt. Depends a bit on relations with Italy too - since the most important of the lines runs through Udine to Trieste.
Also depending a bit on internal politics, OTL Carinthia was big on combining municipalities, as you can see by the borders of both cities. Something that may or may not be true TTL - so numbers may vary.

2.9) Bozen - again, Italians settled there under Mussolini. On the other hand, less people leaving in the 'Option' during WW2. Probably slightly smaller than what you went for.

2.10) St Pölten - it's not Landeshauptstadt TTL. But since that only is a fact since 1986 and the institutions were moved even slower - it won't be a significant fact for growth OTL. It's also industrialised enough for growth in the 20s and 30s - and red enough not to be annexed to Vienna - and a bit too far.

2.11) Baden. Difficult.
It's deeply conservative in many ways - especially compared to the other cities in proximity to Vienna. That makes it a target for annexation to Vienna.
There's the spa and residential areas for the better situated. And then there's the tram right into Vienna, to go work there. I can't see it grow to this extent as you envision - at least not without a significant red government in Land and in the Reichsrat who forcefully push the city in that direction. I'd say look for growth in the area more in Brunn, Vösendorf, Wiener Neudorf and Mödling - but those are pretty high on my 'to be annexed to Vienna list'...
Bad Vöslau is if anything in the same boat as Baden.
Wiener Neustadt is a candidate for that growth - Eisenstadt, Mattersburg and Sopron are over the internal border - maybe also have more growth in Tulln and Krems and St Pölten if you want to keep the Lower Austria numbers the same. Or go to Bratislava.

2.12) Steyr - already mentioned - might absorb some of the growth of Linz. Because despite it's smaller size, it was quite a bit more industrialised. Not being on the main rail line will hurt however.


That gets to places missing:

2.13) Wels: Already mentioned. Might absorb some of Linz's growth. On the main rail line, but not on the Danube. 22k in 1910, 63k today. May be somewhere around 100k TTL?

2.14) Dornbirn/Rheintal/Vorarlberg: I'm pretty certain I mentioned this one in the last thread - again, growth fuelled a lot by migration for both Carinthia/Styria internal migration as well as the refugee waves after both World Wars that won't happen TTL. But again - the area is one of the more industrialised regions in Austria during WW1, so growth will happen, it will attract migration. An OTL-esque export growth to Switzerland and Germany is depending on factors there, but they are well situatied by the basics for growth - if not by location on the far West.
Dornbirn itself is at 16k 1910, 50k today. TTL maybe 70k-ish?
Off the wall - since it's Tyrol and Vorarlberg in your statistics - the unloved central government in Innsbruck might decide to fuse the municipalities that have OTL grown into a more or less contiguous blob - leading to what is OTL some 180k in the Vorarlberger Rheintal (Including Feldkirch and Bregenz - 35k and 29k respectively today - 12k and 13,5k in 1910)

2.15) Klosterneuburg will probably grow more with a bigger Vienna - or end up annexed.

3) Outside Austria (and South Tyrol)

Bratislava/Preßburg - I'd see that one growing larger than you assumed. For the simple fact that with just slightly better infrastructure it's in easy commuting distance from Vienna. OTL currently it takes about an hour - but without the downgrade to one track of the Marchegger Ostbahn and an earlier electrification (that is OTL currently underway) that can easily be shaved to 40 minutes - as are plans currently to be in place by 2025 - or even more.
It's also an important city for the more orthodox Jewish groups - a possible target for migration for those not eager for the more liberal Jewish communities in Vienna or Prague or Budapest. Then again there was also something about Neolog? Not really all that sure.
And despite it's multi-cultural nature, probably the most important city to those considering themselves to the Slovak - not Czech and certainly not Hungarian.

4) High Speed Rail

Rail is unfortunately also constrained by geography. It can get quite expensive to build at a certain point.
So aside from maybe an experimental interurban track on the over more than half of the distance straight as an arrow Marchegger Ostbahn, I'd assume that the first route to be built more or less has to be Vienna - Budapest. There's a few hills in the way - but nothing that should be impossible.

From there the next expansion will probably be Vienna - Brünn, with an eye towards expansion towards Prague soon after. Maybe Krakow too.

Similarly I'd expect expansion work towards the West to follow soon after - depending a bit on relations with (South) Germany (Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg) with how much pressure.
Again, how unified Germany is, and how good relations are with one or the other part might influence the track to the West. Salzburg - and beyond that Munich and Innsbruck via Rosenheim might be the more interesting route internally - but also more challenging. Upriver along the Danube via Passau towards Nuernberg might be seen as a viable alternative. That might also lead to a loop via German territory back towards Pilsen and Prague.

I kind doubt however that a route further West will be 'fully' high speed. Internally the route via Zell is difficult terrain, and the route via Rosenheim and the Inntal then is pretty constrained too. Even current high speed in the Unterinntal is only planned for 220km/h - and that's underground to a significant amount of the route anyway.
Similarly extensions via the Brenner and Arlberg might be interesting - but unlikely to exceed that speed for reasons of difficult geography.

What might however get the full high speed treatment is the Südbahn. The Semmering was the mountain that early Austrian railway engineers succeeded again - world first over that gradient - and it will have this near mythical reputation will all but force them to look into beating it again - this time with high speed rail. See also the OTL Semmering Basistunnel - not high speed by your definition - but something to look into. From there the usual Südbahn route seems okay-ish - Graz - Maribor - Celje is about as forgiving as that terrain gets, but before and after Lublijana there will be another pair of big challenges.

With the amount of rail traffic the route will however generate - depending a bit on availability of alternative routes via Germany and/or the Danube - this will be one of, if not the most important railway route of the Empire.

So both prestige and economic reasons will push for more track in those directions - even if only to get those passengers off the routes cargo could use.

Salzburg - Villach - Maribor and Linz - Graz however will probably not happen either - too mountainous to be really economically viable.

5)Films and Cinema

OTL Austria, or more exact Vienna, was for a short while one of the big players in cinema. Sascha-Film was one of the biggest producers in Europe in the early 1920s. Success didn't last long however - silent films were easily produced for international, or in TTL multilingual, audiences. It was among economic factors - ironically an end to hyperinflation followed those couple years later by the Great Depression - and more and more sound film that broke the industry. While German Exiles made a revival seem possible, the Anschluss ended that.

Also seemingly a lot of animation work at the time - I've never found the time to track down more information on that as of yet.



And probably a lot of other topics I wanted to comment on and had forgotten again. Might take them up later, this post is enough of a monster as it is.

 

[Fehérvári]

@Othala This is amazing! If you have more of this, please keep it coming!

I can't respond to your and others' posts for the time being, but I will sooner or later write my replies!

 

[CASSICTOR2]

I promised I'd take a closer look later on...
So, it's later now.

1.) Concerning populations: Changing municipal borders

This is the one factor that makes this quite difficult to pin down. Speaking from a specifically Austrian (as in OTL Republic of Austria) perspective, annexing or fusing municipalities is always a very emotional political topic. And the municipal borders go back well over a century, let alone the even older church parishes.
There are some areas that over the last century and a bit more saw repeated municipal border changes. Others less so. Generally more happened in the East, less so in the West. Carinthia, Upper Austria and Burgendland were quite common places for such to happen, Styria was the last Land to have a significant one about a decade ago (that more than enough local people still refuse to recognise) and then there was the big chunk that happened during the Nazi time.


2) The cities

2.1) And that brings us Back again to Innsbruck:

1919 Innsbruck was significantly smaller than today. In fact, it was Innsbruck proper, Wilten and Pradl - an area that currently only has around 70k inhabitants. Compare that again to the 53k number you dug up for 1910.
The expansions of the city to it's current borders happened during the Nazi years.
So depending a bit on socio-economic factors - 1910 Innsbruck borders might hold as few as 50k, or maybe up to 90k at a guess. While even in those areas there are open areas - remember that the city is pretty constrained by mountains - those areas are pretty much too steep to reasonably build.
Same goes for open areas in the expansion area - steep areas maybe good for single family homes, proper built up areas, the airport and the industrial and or big box commercial areas... Some slack in there, but not too much.
Especially if one considers the natural disasters: a good chunk of the airport exclusion area is designated flood land. And make no mistake, if flooded, the roll field will end up wet too. To be honest, Innsbruck already has too little area for the Inn to expand out - the city undergoes evacuation every couple years - including things like the university library (with the Inn visible from the new reading room), Ferdinandeum, etc.
And that's not even going into the Sill and other tributaries on the of the city: once the drivers of early- and even proto-industrialisation with water power, now they regularly flood streets when there is heavy rain in the mountains.
And not to forget: Innsbruck is the only city world wide that has to maintain avalanche warnings for core parts of the city.
Yeah, building went a bit overboard in at least some parts - though the last mayor avalanche damage was in the 1930s IIRC.

So aside from maybe Vill and Igls, there's not too much expansion potential in current the OTL borders. Because the areas that might be expanded in have commercial use, cannibalising jobs for population. Maybe the airport - but then you'd have to find an alternative to place on in the west of the country - maybe Bozen on a North-South axis - but that one will run into similar constraints by the mountains as Innsbruck itself has. And be less accessible to people coming from Vorarlberg - who'd then be even more tempted to take business over the border to Switzerland and Germany than they already are OTL.

If there is an impetus to annex more territory, Völs and Rum should work out without too much trouble. Make that OTL another 17k inhabitants. The smaller ones on the slopes of the southern mountain chain should also be relatively easily annexed: Ampass, Aldrans, Lans, Natters and Mutters - make that another 10k.
From there it gets more difficult - Thaur would work - but be aware that that's not good building ground in between to make it contiguous - too steep for anything but single family housing or similar size constrained builds. Make that another 4k - with maybe expansion for another 1-3k there as space currently used agriculturally.

From there there are two problems: how contigous do you want to be: Götzens, Axams, Kematen, Zirl, up into the Stubai. Non of them should be too difficulty aside from the locals wanting or not wanting the annexation. Hall on the other hand is a different beast: with a long tradition and even at times having been significantly more important that Innsbruck - they might have what it takes to gather more than just local resistance to annexation.

And that's not even going into the one big economic factor in Innsbruck directly: The University. To the OTL 133k inhabitants, you have 34k students.

OTL it was one of the 'big three' existing in Austria. It was well regarded by German students as well - waxing and waning a bit with the decades - but different borders might effect it's growth. There's not going to be an impetus for South Tyrolean students to attend there - because there's no South Tyrol. No Brenner border, therefore no exclusive agreement with the Italian government. There might be an agreement in place with Luxembourg anyway, but who knows, might be butterflied. Students from Upper Austria and Salzburg - already contested with Vienna and maybe or maybe not as OTL a newly expanded Salzburg university (1960s they got more than a theological faculty) - they might TTL attend the German language university in Prague instead too. Or even more exotically, go to Lemberg or similarly far away. German after all would likely get one reasonably far even there.

Now of course, there might be a different development too: depending on how Germany develops in TTL - Innsbruck might find itself with more German students than even OTL.

Moving on:

2.2.) Vienna: I think I agreed more or less with 4m in the last thread. Depending a bit on the borders, it might be a bit tight to fit them in - you'd rather avoid the worst excesses of residential high rises I'd assume. On the other hand, the 'Red Vienna' with it's social residential construction will not exist TTL - it is the capital city, residence of the Monarch after all. Can't have the socialists rule it, right?
That might play into expanding borders. OTL Vienna was removed from the county of Lower Austria pretty quickly - leading to a deep socialist-conservative divide between the two counties. There were ideas about Vienna annexing the remaining heavily industrialised, and therefore red, areas, but those never went through, because they were making good tax revenue to Lower Austria.
The OTL Nazi expansions of Vienna do make sense, even in that way, there were more than a few wealthy suburbs annexed in addition to contiguous built up areas. On the other hand, without the problem of power shifts between those two counties - I could also see an expansion to swallow up areas down to Baden (on your list), up to Korneuburg and Klosterneuburg and most of all: probably out into the Marchfeld for those conservative, agricultural voters to keep the mayor nice and conservative.
Considering that the Ballungsraum - smaller in some respects than what I mentioned - has some 3m inhabitants OTL - it staying the capital of the Empire - we might be dealing with more than 4m in an expanded Vienna. I'd say that 6-8m would be possible, depending on a lot of factors.
Let's not forget the Jewish population of Vienna: OTL by 1938 they numbered some 185k - with less than 10k remaining today. TTL this might be one of the groups that expanded the most of the city population - even OTL there was a steady migration of 'Ostjuden' to the city - from Poland and Russia and also the eastern areas of the Habsburg monarchy.
On the other hand, going by OTL trends - this will also be a population that is strongly assimilating. There were a good number of people who were surprised that they were suddenly 'Jews' in 1938 because their grandparents converted to Catholicism even before they married... (Okay, maybe exaggerating a bit there.)


2.3) Graz is difficult to place. OTL it benefited a lot from migration following both World Wars, as 'German' or 'Austrian' people fled or were driven from their earlier places of residence in the East or South. And TTL it's just a mere stop at the way to the port of the world, at Trieste - not the last big city to the south-east, before the Iron Curtain. Not a place where migration movement naturally stops.
So I'm unsure. I notice you picked an agglomeration population number - 328k over the 292k of the city proper - but unless you add the 'outer agglomeration' number you occasionally find, I doubt you get to the 750k either.
I'd probably go with a growth significantly lower - not the near 5 you picked, but probably more like 3, maybe 3,5.


2.4) Linz will certainly suffer in some ways. It isn't the 'Führerstadt' - it won't get the Herman-Göring-Werke - sorry, Voest and similarly big ticket items just handed to them. Oh, sure, it's the capital of Upper Austria, it's well situated with it's Danube harbour (something that is not that insignificant - TTL without the monarchy falling apart, and without the Iron Curtain, if Romania and Bulgaria are even halfway friendly barge traffic on the river might be ten times what it's OTL) - but it will loose at last some growth to Wels and Steyr as well.
Not to mention without the generous annexations of the Nazis, it might end up slightly smaller in borders than today.

2.5) Salzburg is one that I'd assume could actually grow more. OTL they really messed up with their building codes and building programs. It's often claimed to be the most expensive city in Austria. And sure, if you want to live in the Altstadt between Hohensalzburg and Kapuzinerberg, that will always be true. But in the city itself? More than enough space to expand.
Especially considering that they were pretty sparing with annexations OTL - all of them happening more or less before 1938 - and there are a few more candidates right on the border. So space would be there - if it wasn't for those NIMBY's.
Considering that OTL the agglomeration adds some 210k to the 155k of the city for some total 365k-ish? Depending on how relations to Germany/Bavaria are - border city and all that - Salzburg TTL might exceed your numbers by quite a bit.

2.6) Wiener Neustadt is one of those cities that was for a short moment proposed to be annexed to Vienna - since it's a bit of a distance and deep red, I'd expect it to stay independent TTL too - though for the exact opposite reasoning. Population numbers look okay on first glance and there area few geographical constraints for growth.
Though there will be whining about agricultural land. (Ignore the airports. And the military and firefighting training areas a bit further out. Forestry on flat land? Not sure what you are talking about - think of the food!)

2.7) Trento.
OTL it benefited strongly from the Italian Italianization policy. As in resettlement of Southern Italians and new factories so they have jobs too. TTL however I can see some population drain to a) Italy or b) Trieste. Especially if Trieste gets an Italian or multi-lingual University over Trento. And for a variety of reasons I could see that happening - Germanization of Tyrol and less threat through the cosmopolitan port city than a conservative seat of a Bishopric, for example.

2.8) Klagenfurt and Villach - I'll combine those two.
Villach is the even more important transport - especially rail - node compared to Klagenfurt. In a more rail based economy, and or more population growth prior to demographic transitions compared to OTL, I would see Villach as growing stronger than Klagenfurt. Depends a bit on relations with Italy too - since the most important of the lines runs through Udine to Trieste.
Also depending a bit on internal politics, OTL Carinthia was big on combining municipalities, as you can see by the borders of both cities. Something that may or may not be true TTL - so numbers may vary.

2.9) Bozen - again, Italians settled there under Mussolini. On the other hand, less people leaving in the 'Option' during WW2. Probably slightly smaller than what you went for.

2.10) St Pölten - it's not Landeshauptstadt TTL. But since that only is a fact since 1986 and the institutions were moved even slower - it won't be a significant fact for growth OTL. It's also industrialised enough for growth in the 20s and 30s - and red enough not to be annexed to Vienna - and a bit too far.

2.11) Baden. Difficult.
It's deeply conservative in many ways - especially compared to the other cities in proximity to Vienna. That makes it a target for annexation to Vienna.
There's the spa and residential areas for the better situated. And then there's the tram right into Vienna, to go work there. I can't see it grow to this extent as you envision - at least not without a significant red government in Land and in the Reichsrat who forcefully push the city in that direction. I'd say look for growth in the area more in Brunn, Vösendorf, Wiener Neudorf and Mödling - but those are pretty high on my 'to be annexed to Vienna list'...
Bad Vöslau is if anything in the same boat as Baden.
Wiener Neustadt is a candidate for that growth - Eisenstadt, Mattersburg and Sopron are over the internal border - maybe also have more growth in Tulln and Krems and St Pölten if you want to keep the Lower Austria numbers the same. Or go to Bratislava.

2.12) Steyr - already mentioned - might absorb some of the growth of Linz. Because despite it's smaller size, it was quite a bit more industrialised. Not being on the main rail line will hurt however.


That gets to places missing:

2.13) Wels: Already mentioned. Might absorb some of Linz's growth. On the main rail line, but not on the Danube. 22k in 1910, 63k today. May be somewhere around 100k TTL?

2.14) Dornbirn/Rheintal/Vorarlberg: I'm pretty certain I mentioned this one in the last thread - again, growth fuelled a lot by migration for both Carinthia/Styria internal migration as well as the refugee waves after both World Wars that won't happen TTL. But again - the area is one of the more industrialised regions in Austria during WW1, so growth will happen, it will attract migration. An OTL-esque export growth to Switzerland and Germany is depending on factors there, but they are well situatied by the basics for growth - if not by location on the far West.
Dornbirn itself is at 16k 1910, 50k today. TTL maybe 70k-ish?
Off the wall - since it's Tyrol and Vorarlberg in your statistics - the unloved central government in Innsbruck might decide to fuse the municipalities that have OTL grown into a more or less contiguous blob - leading to what is OTL some 180k in the Vorarlberger Rheintal (Including Feldkirch and Bregenz - 35k and 29k respectively today - 12k and 13,5k in 1910)

2.15) Klosterneuburg will probably grow more with a bigger Vienna - or end up annexed.

3) Outside Austria (and South Tyrol)

Bratislava/Preßburg - I'd see that one growing larger than you assumed. For the simple fact that with just slightly better infrastructure it's in easy commuting distance from Vienna. OTL currently it takes about an hour - but without the downgrade to one track of the Marchegger Ostbahn and an earlier electrification (that is OTL currently underway) that can easily be shaved to 40 minutes - as are plans currently to be in place by 2025 - or even more.
It's also an important city for the more orthodox Jewish groups - a possible target for migration for those not eager for the more liberal Jewish communities in Vienna or Prague or Budapest. Then again there was also something about Neolog? Not really all that sure.
And despite it's multi-cultural nature, probably the most important city to those considering themselves to the Slovak - not Czech and certainly not Hungarian.

4) High Speed Rail

Rail is unfortunately also constrained by geography. It can get quite expensive to build at a certain point.
So aside from maybe an experimental interurban track on the over more than half of the distance straight as an arrow Marchegger Ostbahn, I'd assume that the first route to be built more or less has to be Vienna - Budapest. There's a few hills in the way - but nothing that should be impossible.

From there the next expansion will probably be Vienna - Brünn, with an eye towards expansion towards Prague soon after. Maybe Krakow too.

Similarly I'd expect expansion work towards the West to follow soon after - depending a bit on relations with (South) Germany (Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg) with how much pressure.
Again, how unified Germany is, and how good relations are with one or the other part might influence the track to the West. Salzburg - and beyond that Munich and Innsbruck via Rosenheim might be the more interesting route internally - but also more challenging. Upriver along the Danube via Passau towards Nuernberg might be seen as a viable alternative. That might also lead to a loop via German territory back towards Pilsen and Prague.

I kind doubt however that a route further West will be 'fully' high speed. Internally the route via Zell is difficult terrain, and the route via Rosenheim and the Inntal then is pretty constrained too. Even current high speed in the Unterinntal is only planned for 220km/h - and that's underground to a significant amount of the route anyway.
Similarly extensions via the Brenner and Arlberg might be interesting - but unlikely to exceed that speed for reasons of difficult geography.

What might however get the full high speed treatment is the Südbahn. The Semmering was the mountain that early Austrian railway engineers succeeded again - world first over that gradient - and it will have this near mythical reputation will all but force them to look into beating it again - this time with high speed rail. See also the OTL Semmering Basistunnel - not high speed by your definition - but something to look into. From there the usual Südbahn route seems okay-ish - Graz - Maribor - Celje is about as forgiving as that terrain gets, but before and after Lublijana there will be another pair of big challenges.

With the amount of rail traffic the route will however generate - depending a bit on availability of alternative routes via Germany and/or the Danube - this will be one of, if not the most important railway route of the Empire.

So both prestige and economic reasons will push for more track in those directions - even if only to get those passengers off the routes cargo could use.

Salzburg - Villach - Maribor and Linz - Graz however will probably not happen either - too mountainous to be really economically viable.

5)Films and Cinema

OTL Austria, or more exact Vienna, was for a short while one of the big players in cinema. Sascha-Film was one of the biggest producers in Europe in the early 1920s. Success didn't last long however - silent films were easily produced for international, or in TTL multilingual, audiences. It was among economic factors - ironically an end to hyperinflation followed those couple years later by the Great Depression - and more and more sound film that broke the industry. While German Exiles made a revival seem possible, the Anschluss ended that.

Also seemingly a lot of animation work at the time - I've never found the time to track down more information on that as of yet.



And probably a lot of other topics I wanted to comment on and had forgotten again. Might take them up later, this post is enough of a monster as it is.

@Othala This is amazing! If you have more of this, please keep it coming!

I can't respond to your and others' posts for the time being, but I will sooner or later write my replies!

OH MY GOD SOMEONE ACTUALLY RESPONDED IN THIS THREAD AFTER WEEK OF NO COMMENT?!!
LET'S FUCKING GOOOO!!!!!!!

 

[CASSICTOR2]

Also seemingly a lot of animation work at the time - I've never found the time to track down more information on that as of yet

I made this Posted about Potential Slavic Stop Motion industry.
What do you think?

Honestly there One thing that will be Amazing to discuss about AH Media and that is wait for it... . . . .. . . . . Stop Motion Animation.
Now you're probably ask yourself why are we talking about Stop Motion in this TL thread?

Well I think in this scenario where is Eastern Europe is not Destroyed by WWII then Russia and by extension the whole Eastern bloc Animation industry will be alot more popular and in the Mainstream.

Think about it without the devastating cost of Soviet Communism, WWII and the declined of 90s the Animation industry from EE will not be poorer and cheaper than in OTL as they not suffered from restriction and decline by the Communist State. Decorators artist who immigrates from Eastern Europe will likely not migrate in the first place and likely stays.

One saying that is very interesting to discuss about and that is stop motion animation because stop motion originated from Russia ( specifically Lithuania ) where they were very growing talent with stop motion animation and many people who are geniuses, pioneers of that were in Russia.

Meaning no Communism no WWII and no declined of 90s meaning Stop Motion will be more associated with Eastern Europe than in America & Western Europe.

Meaning stop motion animation will be more produced and made in Eastern Europe akind like Asia with Anime ( Both had notable countries like Russia and Japan who produced the most of animation in the region )

TL Stop motion industry will be mostly of or at least half produced in Eastern Europe unlike are OTL.

Instead of Portland being the Capital of Stop Motion, it is Kaunas will be Capital of Stop Motion in the World

I even make two posts about this before In a other thread


Now that's my case what do you think of it guys

 

[Othala]

I made this Posted about Potential Slavic Stop Motion industry.
What do you think?

I think I mentioned that my own focus is in Austria proper more than beyond that.

Animation work in Austria had a short peak - 1919-1924, again the time when inflation made it cheap for foreign interests to invest.
You usually see the names Ladislaus Tuszynski, Louis Seel and Peter Eng associated with those works. Eng of course had at least some international recognition still today, though more for his advertisement work and style than anything else. The other two seem to have been pretty local and a lot of information on the topic overall has been lost in the years between 1938 and 1945.
But as I said, little that I know, and I want to track down "Der österreichische Zeichentrickfilm in der Stummfilmzeit", a paper written in 2004 one of these days...

Going into speculation:

Austria-Hungary is a big enough market to support some domestic film industry, including animation. Not least because those have to be easier dubbed or can be produced as mostly silent films compared to live action.
Might be that you find those same people in Vienna doing their thing. Might be that Prague (that I know had something of a film industry, but nothing beyond that) might be preferred for animation work. Or elsewhere I know nothing about. There can be competition from several centres that cannibalise viewership and investment from each other.
There might even be the outsider picks - considering the labour that goes into proper animated films - you might end up with Sarajevo or Czernowitz as the centre of Danube Federation animation. That might be today's 'labour is expensive' paradigm biasing myself however.

I don't know nearly enough about Stop Motion or Eastern European influence there to really speculate. Just quickly reading Starewicz Wikipedia entry - he and most other film makers seem to have sided with the Whites after the Revolution. Can't remember if we had any WoG on the result of the civil war TTL - but a surviving monarchy might be attractive to White Emigrates over France. Or it might not, as they were the enemy during the last war.

What might be attractive years down the line however: If Russia stays hostile, and a film industry establishes itself somewhere in Galicia or the Bukovina, it could be an interesting target for artist fleeing Russia - leading to a synthesis of styles.

 

[Fehérvári]

1.) Concerning populations: Changing municipal borders

This is the one factor that makes this quite difficult to pin down. Speaking from a specifically Austrian (as in OTL Republic of Austria) perspective, annexing or fusing municipalities is always a very emotional political topic. And the municipal borders go back well over a century, let alone the even older church parishes.
There are some areas that over the last century and a bit more saw repeated municipal border changes. Others less so. Generally more happened in the East, less so in the West. Carinthia, Upper Austria and Burgendland were quite common places for such to happen, Styria was the last Land to have a significant one about a decade ago (that more than enough local people still refuse to recognise) and then there was the big chunk that happened during the Nazi time.

Wouldn't it be reasonable to think that such mentality developed specifically because of the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy? People cling to relics of the past specifically because the collapse of Austria-Hungary broke some kind of natural continuity in a sense. Without so much being lost, perhaps this clinging might be less powerful ITTL.

2) The cities

2.1) And that brings us Back again to Innsbruck:

1919 Innsbruck was significantly smaller than today. In fact, it was Innsbruck proper, Wilten and Pradl - an area that currently only has around 70k inhabitants. Compare that again to the 53k number you dug up for 1910.

Here's my source: https://web.archive.org/web/20131126045717/http://omm1910.hu/?/adatbank

The expansions of the city to it's current borders happened during the Nazi years.
So depending a bit on socio-economic factors - 1910 Innsbruck borders might hold as few as 50k, or maybe up to 90k at a guess. While even in those areas there are open areas - remember that the city is pretty constrained by mountains - those areas are pretty much too steep to reasonably build.
Same goes for open areas in the expansion area - steep areas maybe good for single family homes, proper built up areas, the airport and the industrial and or big box commercial areas... Some slack in there, but not too much.
Especially if one considers the natural disasters: a good chunk of the airport exclusion area is designated flood land. And make no mistake, if flooded, the roll field will end up wet too. To be honest, Innsbruck already has too little area for the Inn to expand out - the city undergoes evacuation every couple years - including things like the university library (with the Inn visible from the new reading room), Ferdinandeum, etc.
And that's not even going into the Sill and other tributaries on the of the city: once the drivers of early- and even proto-industrialisation with water power, now they regularly flood streets when there is heavy rain in the mountains.
And not to forget: Innsbruck is the only city world wide that has to maintain avalanche warnings for core parts of the city.
Yeah, building went a bit overboard in at least some parts - though the last mayor avalanche damage was in the 1930s IIRC.

So aside from maybe Vill and Igls, there's not too much expansion potential in current the OTL borders. Because the areas that might be expanded in have commercial use, cannibalising jobs for population. Maybe the airport - but then you'd have to find an alternative to place on in the west of the country - maybe Bozen on a North-South axis - but that one will run into similar constraints by the mountains as Innsbruck itself has. And be less accessible to people coming from Vorarlberg - who'd then be even more tempted to take business over the border to Switzerland and Germany than they already are OTL.

If there is an impetus to annex more territory, Völs and Rum should work out without too much trouble. Make that OTL another 17k inhabitants. The smaller ones on the slopes of the southern mountain chain should also be relatively easily annexed: Ampass, Aldrans, Lans, Natters and Mutters - make that another 10k.
From there it gets more difficult - Thaur would work - but be aware that that's not good building ground in between to make it contiguous - too steep for anything but single family housing or similar size constrained builds. Make that another 4k - with maybe expansion for another 1-3k there as space currently used agriculturally.

From there there are two problems: how contigous do you want to be: Götzens, Axams, Kematen, Zirl, up into the Stubai. Non of them should be too difficulty aside from the locals wanting or not wanting the annexation. Hall on the other hand is a different beast: with a long tradition and even at times having been significantly more important that Innsbruck - they might have what it takes to gather more than just local resistance to annexation.

And that's not even going into the one big economic factor in Innsbruck directly: The University. To the OTL 133k inhabitants, you have 34k students.

OTL it was one of the 'big three' existing in Austria. It was well regarded by German students as well - waxing and waning a bit with the decades - but different borders might effect it's growth. There's not going to be an impetus for South Tyrolean students to attend there - because there's no South Tyrol. No Brenner border, therefore no exclusive agreement with the Italian government. There might be an agreement in place with Luxembourg anyway, but who knows, might be butterflied. Students from Upper Austria and Salzburg - already contested with Vienna and maybe or maybe not as OTL a newly expanded Salzburg university (1960s they got more than a theological faculty) - they might TTL attend the German language university in Prague instead too. Or even more exotically, go to Lemberg or similarly far away. German after all would likely get one reasonably far even there.

Now of course, there might be a different development too: depending on how Germany develops in TTL - Innsbruck might find itself with more German students than even OTL.

This is extremely informative, thank you very much! I didn't realise Innsbruck's potential for expansion was so severely limited. Suppose I include Völs, Rum and the surrounding small settlements into the city, maintain the number of students (students from Germany and the generally higher population could allow that, maybe the realisation of Italian language faculty could also help) and take into consideration some (tolerable levels of) vertical expansion, then could a population target of 200 000 work? If the airport is built between Völs and Zirl?

2.2.) Vienna: I think I agreed more or less with 4m in the last thread. Depending a bit on the borders, it might be a bit tight to fit them in - you'd rather avoid the worst excesses of residential high rises I'd assume. On the other hand, the 'Red Vienna' with it's social residential construction will not exist TTL - it is the capital city, residence of the Monarch after all. Can't have the socialists rule it, right?
That might play into expanding borders. OTL Vienna was removed from the county of Lower Austria pretty quickly - leading to a deep socialist-conservative divide between the two counties. There were ideas about Vienna annexing the remaining heavily industrialised, and therefore red, areas, but those never went through, because they were making good tax revenue to Lower Austria.

This is extremely rough, but I envisioned something like this:

(Sorry for the low quality)

The OTL Nazi expansions of Vienna do make sense, even in that way, there were more than a few wealthy suburbs annexed in addition to contiguous built up areas. On the other hand, without the problem of power shifts between those two counties - I could also see an expansion to swallow up areas down to Baden (on your list), up to Korneuburg and Klosterneuburg and most of all: probably out into the Marchfeld for those conservative, agricultural voters to keep the mayor nice and conservative.

I didn't want to include Korneuburg and Baden. Geographically speaking, they are a bit too far removed from Vienna's core, imo. If further expansion needs to be considered, then I think the banks of the Danube and perhaps the Northeast would be better targets.

Considering that the Ballungsraum - smaller in some respects than what I mentioned - has some 3m inhabitants OTL - it staying the capital of the Empire - we might be dealing with more than 4m in an expanded Vienna. I'd say that 6-8m would be possible, depending on a lot of factors.

By Ballungsraum, you mean the Viennese Agglomeration? If so, I could certainly agree with a 6 million figure. Should it be any higher and I would have to reconsider the planned total population for Lower Austria..."^^

Let's not forget the Jewish population of Vienna: OTL by 1938 they numbered some 185k - with less than 10k remaining today. TTL this might be one of the groups that expanded the most of the city population - even OTL there was a steady migration of 'Ostjuden' to the city - from Poland and Russia and also the eastern areas of the Habsburg monarchy.
On the other hand, going by OTL trends - this will also be a population that is strongly assimilating. There were a good number of people who were surprised that they were suddenly 'Jews' in 1938 because their grandparents converted to Catholicism even before they married... (Okay, maybe exaggerating a bit there.)

Assimilation would be play a big role, imo. Even without conversion, I do believe that most people would not consider themselves Jews on an ethnic basis, only religious- or cultural heritance-wise. Then on the other hand, many would probably actually convert.

2.3) Graz is difficult to place. OTL it benefited a lot from migration following both World Wars, as 'German' or 'Austrian' people fled or were driven from their earlier places of residence in the East or South. And TTL it's just a mere stop at the way to the port of the world, at Trieste - not the last big city to the south-east, before the Iron Curtain. Not a place where migration movement naturally stops.

I believe the the relative closeness of the Iron Curtain actually impeded the growth of Graz, not unlike Maribor, Szombathely or Sopron. Sure, the city is not a natural stop of migration, but its still a rich regional capital that ITTL would have a slightly larger local population pool available for its growth. Furthermore, putting aside the geographically distant and diverse Trieste, Graz would still be the no. 2 German city within Austria Proper. No, considering Vienna's potential diversity ITTL, Graz might gain the reputation of being THE German City in Austria Proper.

So I'm unsure. I notice you picked an agglomeration population number - 328k over the 292k of the city proper

Oh, that wasn't intentional, my mistake.

but unless you add the 'outer agglomeration' number you occasionally find, I doubt you get to the 750k either.
I'd probably go with a growth significantly lower - not the near 5 you picked, but probably more like 3, maybe 3,5.

All things considered, could a pop. of 600 000 be acceptable? That would be an almost x4 growth, higher than what you suggested, but my reasoning above could maybe validate it?

2.4) Linz will certainly suffer in some ways. It isn't the 'Führerstadt' - it won't get the Herman-Göring-Werke - sorry, Voest and similarly big ticket items just handed to them. Oh, sure, it's the capital of Upper Austria, it's well situated with it's Danube harbour (something that is not that insignificant - TTL without the monarchy falling apart, and without the Iron Curtain, if Romania and Bulgaria are even halfway friendly barge traffic on the river might be ten times what it's OTL) - but it will loose at last some growth to Wels and Steyr as well.
Not to mention without the generous annexations of the Nazis, it might end up slightly smaller in borders than today.

Valid points. I could kick down Linz's numbers from 325k to 250k maybe, then distribute that 75k to Wels, Steyr (and maybe some other cities). Would that work?

2.5) Salzburg is one that I'd assume could actually grow more. OTL they really messed up with their building codes and building programs. It's often claimed to be the most expensive city in Austria. And sure, if you want to live in the Altstadt between Hohensalzburg and Kapuzinerberg, that will always be true. But in the city itself? More than enough space to expand.
Especially considering that they were pretty sparing with annexations OTL - all of them happening more or less before 1938 - and there are a few more candidates right on the border. So space would be there - if it wasn't for those NIMBY's.
Considering that OTL the agglomeration adds some 210k to the 155k of the city for some total 365k-ish? Depending on how relations to Germany/Bavaria are - border city and all that - Salzburg TTL might exceed your numbers by quite a bit.

I had no idea. Fascinating. Annexing all of the agglomeration would be too much, but taking into account a moderate amount of expansion, how does a pop. of 250k sound?

2.6) Wiener Neustadt is one of those cities that was for a short moment proposed to be annexed to Vienna - since it's a bit of a distance and deep red, I'd expect it to stay independent TTL too - though for the exact opposite reasoning. Population numbers look okay on first glance and there area few geographical constraints for growth.
Though there will be whining about agricultural land. (Ignore the airports. And the military and firefighting training areas a bit further out. Forestry on flat land? Not sure what you are talking about - think of the food!)

The closeness of the Hungarian border would put some constraint on Wiener Neustadt's growth (administratively speaking), but aside from that I see no real reason why it couldn't reach 175k.

2.7) Trento.
OTL it benefited strongly from the Italian Italianization policy. As in resettlement of Southern Italians and new factories so they have jobs too. TTL however I can see some population drain to a) Italy or b) Trieste. Especially if Trieste gets an Italian or multi-lingual University over Trento. And for a variety of reasons I could see that happening - Germanization of Tyrol and less threat through the cosmopolitan port city than a conservative seat of a Bishopric, for example.

So should I lower the city's population? Maybe to 125k? Couldn't the city's conservativeness contribute to higher natural growth?

2.8) Klagenfurt and Villach - I'll combine those two.
Villach is the even more important transport - especially rail - node compared to Klagenfurt. In a more rail based economy, and or more population growth prior to demographic transitions compared to OTL, I would see Villach as growing stronger than Klagenfurt. Depends a bit on relations with Italy too - since the most important of the lines runs through Udine to Trieste.
Also depending a bit on internal politics, OTL Carinthia was big on combining municipalities, as you can see by the borders of both cities. Something that may or may not be true TTL - so numbers may vary.

I thought the same, however I wasn't wether there could be other reasons for Klagenfurt's larger population. How does 125k-125k sound? Nice and simple.

2.9) Bozen - again, Italians settled there under Mussolini. On the other hand, less people leaving in the 'Option' during WW2. Probably slightly smaller than what you went for.

Those two things probably even themselves out. The higher population compared to OTL comes from absence of WW2's casualties. Imo, 125k is within reason.

2.10) St Pölten - it's not Landeshauptstadt TTL. But since that only is a fact since 1986 and the institutions were moved even slower - it won't be a significant fact for growth OTL. It's also industrialised enough for growth in the 20s and 30s - and red enough not to be annexed to Vienna - and a bit too far.

2.11) Baden. Difficult.
It's deeply conservative in many ways - especially compared to the other cities in proximity to Vienna. That makes it a target for annexation to Vienna.
There's the spa and residential areas for the better situated. And then there's the tram right into Vienna, to go work there. I can't see it grow to this extent as you envision - at least not without a significant red government in Land and in the Reichsrat who forcefully push the city in that direction. I'd say look for growth in the area more in Brunn, Vösendorf, Wiener Neudorf and Mödling - but those are pretty high on my 'to be annexed to Vienna list'...
Bad Vöslau is if anything in the same boat as Baden.
Wiener Neustadt is a candidate for that growth - Eisenstadt, Mattersburg and Sopron are over the internal border - maybe also have more growth in Tulln and Krems and St Pölten if you want to keep the Lower Austria numbers the same. Or go to Bratislava.

For both of these cities, I thought their status as commuter cities to Vienna would naturally lead to such levels of growth IOTL. Was that off? Maybe their high growth could be a deliberate policy to "unburden" the overcrowded Vienna?

2.14) Dornbirn/Rheintal/Vorarlberg: I'm pretty certain I mentioned this one in the last thread - again, growth fuelled a lot by migration for both Carinthia/Styria internal migration as well as the refugee waves after both World Wars that won't happen TTL. But again - the area is one of the more industrialised regions in Austria during WW1, so growth will happen, it will attract migration. An OTL-esque export growth to Switzerland and Germany is depending on factors there, but they are well situatied by the basics for growth - if not by location on the far West.
Dornbirn itself is at 16k 1910, 50k today. TTL maybe 70k-ish?
Off the wall - since it's Tyrol and Vorarlberg in your statistics - the unloved central government in Innsbruck might decide to fuse the municipalities that have OTL grown into a more or less contiguous blob - leading to what is OTL some 180k in the Vorarlberger Rheintal (Including Feldkirch and Bregenz - 35k and 29k respectively today - 12k and 13,5k in 1910)

I didn't plan for any great mergers in Vorarlberg, that's why no city hit the 100k mark. I also estimated Dornbirn reaching about 75k ITTL. How feasible is the unification of the Bregenz-Dornbirn-Lustenau triangle? Is such thing really on the table? That would create quite a large city, which would certainly be included.

2.15) Klosterneuburg will probably grow more with a bigger Vienna - or end up annexed.

I considered the latter.

3) Outside Austria (and South Tyrol)

Bratislava/Preßburg - I'd see that one growing larger than you assumed. For the simple fact that with just slightly better infrastructure it's in easy commuting distance from Vienna. OTL currently it takes about an hour - but without the downgrade to one track of the Marchegger Ostbahn and an earlier electrification (that is OTL currently underway) that can easily be shaved to 40 minutes - as are plans currently to be in place by 2025 - or even more.
It's also an important city for the more orthodox Jewish groups - a possible target for migration for those not eager for the more liberal Jewish communities in Vienna or Prague or Budapest. Then again there was also something about Neolog? Not really all that sure.
And despite it's multi-cultural nature, probably the most important city to those considering themselves to the Slovak - not Czech and certainly not Hungarian.

Preßburg would lack its position as capital of Slovakia and many people would chose to migrate straight to Vienna, imo. Administrative constraints would also play a role (no Transdanubian expansion). Atleast this was my reasoning why the population wouldn't get any higher. Sopron would also be there as an alternative option for Vienna-commutters. On another note, I think Žilina, Banská Bystrica or Nitra would better fill the role of the primary cultural centre of Slovaks.


Sorry for the extreme delay in my answer! Even now, I couldn't yet reply to everything either. I will try to reply to the rest as soon as I can!

 

[Othala]

Seems we take a while to respond each time...

Wouldn't it be reasonable to think that such mentality developed specifically because of the dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy? People cling to relics of the past specifically because the collapse of Austria-Hungary broke some kind of natural continuity in a sense. Without so much being lost, perhaps this clinging might be less powerful ITTL.

I had a long thought about that one. And I don't think so. Or more exactly, I think come of those feelings against municipal changes predate the dissolution of the Monarchy.
One is the common human resistance to change. So far so usual.
On the other...
I think it got something to do with the distance to authority, why the west is even more resistant to those.
Vorarlberg for example looked to Innsbruck at the closest for authority. At times as far as Freiburg/Breisgau, or even Ensisheim, that these days belongs to France. So it was local authorities that dealt with things. The Amann, the Gericht, not some distant authority. Unlike the inner Austrian Länder, they even got to send their own officials to the Kreistag in the Swabian Circle of the HRE, unlike those in the Austrian Circle who didn't have those.
What it also meant however is a deep in-group out-group idea, one that still echoes to today. Doesn't help of course that Vorarlberg speaks Allemanic, not Bavarian.
Similarly Tyrol, if for different reasons. Mountain valleys with a relative distant authority. Innsbruck might have a Hofburg, but who is the last one to reside there full time?
Maximilian I.
Everyone after was mostly just a regent.
Then there's the idea of the common Tyrolean, the Schütze, rising in defence of his own homeland - see Andreas Hofer and his fight against Napoleon long after the Habsburgs had surrendered those areas to the French ally Bavaria.
Meanwhile looking further east: Strong central power in Salzburg, Upper and Lower Austria were pretty centralised too, so was Styria. Not really sure what was going on in Carinthia, but they certainly couldn't point to a similar tradition of (relative) independence of the lowest government as Tyrol or Vorarlberg. Not when their own OTL history is mostly shaped by their post WWI relation towards Slovenia, overshadowing all before that, to the point where I simply don't know enough to tell.

Or I might be completely wrong, and that is just my own Western-Austrian bias showing.

Here's my source: https://web.archive.org/web/20131126045717/http://omm1910.hu/?/adatbank

Interesting.

Checks first: Yep, Vorarlberg down from 102 municipalities on there to to a mere 96 today...
Checking Innsbruck... Yep, exactly as I thought. Just those three of the core.

So that database takes the 1910 border - at least in the Austrian West.
Something to consider.

This is extremely informative, thank you very much! I didn't realise Innsbruck's potential for expansion was so severely limited. Suppose I include Völs, Rum and the surrounding small settlements into the city, maintain the number of students (students from Germany and the generally higher population could allow that, maybe the realisation of Italian language faculty could also help) and take into consideration some (tolerable levels of) vertical expansion, then could a population target of 200 000 work? If the airport is built between Völs and Zirl?

Them and those on the souther slopes, sure, those are the easiest annexations. Though the like of Mutters and Natters will bring some wealthy NIBY's with them.

Height of the city is in part restricted OTL due to the airport. Apparently there were some visiting Professors from the US in the early to mid 2000 that had panic attacks when seeing those planes approach the 'towers' (with their mere 12 stories IIRC) of the University.

With a different airport location, those restrictions could be relaxed however - though there might be some initiatives to 'preserve the Gründerzeit character' of the city anyway.

I said earlier - 170 000 to 190 000 in current borders. If you open up the airport, marshy as it might be, yeah, I think 200 000 should work out in current borders. Add the annexations? 230 000 to 240 000?

Not sure on the airport. Pilots need special training for steep approach on the current one. Might work for an alternate one between Völs and Zirl - just eyeballing the mountain elevations around there. Not sure what the rock cliffs on the north side of the Inn does to thermals however.

This is extremely rough, but I envisioned something like this:

Hm, Klosterneuburg, check. Langenzerdorf, Gerasdorf, Groß Enzersdorf, check. Might want to snag Deutsch-Wagram on the way, and those tiny places in between like Raasdorf. Good conservatives there, if anything. And not too much 'empty' land.
Schwechat - pretty red but another obvious one.
Himberg, Leopoldsdorf, check.
And then Perchtoldsdorf (OTL relative conservative - might be different here), Wiener Neudorf, Vösendorf, Brunn, (politically balanced OTL) and Mödling (rather red post WWI, but OTL had more than one direction change due to population growth), as expected too.

Looks fine. 4,5m maybe on those borders?

(Then again, took a quick peek again at Nazi Groß Wien to refresh my memory: Höflein an der Donau? Seriously? That's way upstream. And down all those flyspecks to the south down to Moosbrunn?)

I didn't want to include Korneuburg and Baden. Geographically speaking, they are a bit too far removed from Vienna's core, imo. If further expansion needs to be considered, then I think the banks of the Danube and perhaps the Northeast would be better targets.

I can understand that.
Northeast - Sure.
Down the Danube? Might be something that has to be considered with conservationist efforts in mind. There might be some Archduke or other who wants to keep those riparian forests as a hunting ground. Or you know, the thing that OTL were the founding events of the Green party of Austria, preserving those woods from hydro power. (Better to import gas from the Soviet Union...)
Annexing? Sure. Serious city expansion planing - putting those dense settlements on the ground a la Aspern Seestadt? Not so sure.

By Ballungsraum, you mean the Viennese Agglomeration? If so, I could certainly agree with a 6 million figure. Should it be any higher and I would have to reconsider the planned total population for Lower Austria..."^^

Agglomeration, yes. Slipped back into German there. (Ballung - concentration, Raum - space)

Assimilation would be play a big role, imo. Even without conversion, I do believe that most people would not consider themselves Jews on an ethnic basis, only religious- or cultural heritance-wise. Then on the other hand, many would probably actually convert.

Convert, culturally Jewish, non-participating, even irreligion. Assimilation comes in many forms. Several high profile examples existed in fin-de-siecle Vienna. Lots of shades without the all-or-nothing viewpoint that were the Rassengesetzte.
Jewishness as a race might not even be a topic outside of some of the more extreme right wing groups or orthodox Jews.
Though it makes one consider: Vienna will likely not be as overwhelmingly majority (Roman) Catholic as it is (was) OTL. Muslims from Bosnia, Ukraine Greek Catholic from Galicia, Protestants from Eastern Hungary...

I believe the the relative closeness of the Iron Curtain actually impeded the growth of Graz, not unlike Maribor, Szombathely or Sopron. Sure, the city is not a natural stop of migration, but its still a rich regional capital that ITTL would have a slightly larger local population pool available for its growth. Furthermore, putting aside the geographically distant and diverse Trieste, Graz would still be the no. 2 German city within Austria Proper. No, considering Vienna's potential diversity ITTL, Graz might gain the reputation of being THE German City in Austria Proper.

Again, might be my Western Bias showing, but population aside, I always saw Salzburg as the 'second city' after Vienna.
But I can at least follow your arguments.

All things considered, could a pop. of 600 000 be acceptable? That would be an almost x4 growth, higher than what you suggested, but my reasoning above could maybe validate it?

So yeah. Sound fine with those arguments.

Valid points. I could kick down Linz's numbers from 325k to 250k maybe, then distribute that 75k to Wels, Steyr (and maybe some other cities). Would that work?

Or Leonding, Marchtrenk, Enns, St Valentin - plenty places in that area that might profit. But for simplicity sake - off those Wels and Steyr with them.

I had no idea. Fascinating. Annexing all of the agglomeration would be too much, but taking into account a moderate amount of expansion, how does a pop. of 250k sound?

250k with an agglomeration that is probably in relation to that. So maybe another 250k, since I assume growth there with hopefully less pressure due to prices in the city? For 500k for city+agglomeration?
The ones I'd have eyed up for further annexation would be Wals and Siezenheim (where there were IIRC plans in the 50s) and maybe Anif?

The closeness of the Hungarian border would put some constraint on Wiener Neustadt's growth (administratively speaking), but aside from that I see no real reason why it couldn't reach 175k.

Enough space to the North and South. Doesn't have to be Neudörfl (Lajtaszentmiklós?)

So should I lower the city's population? Maybe to 125k? Couldn't the city's conservativeness contribute to higher natural growth?

Very difficult to say.
I'd say three elements: First, how are relations with Italy? There primarily, how easy is it to cross the border. Over the span of a century, not just the 'now'. Because as the Italians between the Germans and the Italian border - if it's on average easy to cross, with maybe even some courting for workers, but not migrants. Potentially in both directions. That would in my opinion help growth.

Second, how big a draw are other places? Just looking inside the monarchy. Vienna offers opportunity. Innsbruck might offer an Italian faculty. Trieste is that cosmopolitan harbour with a solid Italian plurality (probably) and might even offer an Italian language University (or simply to get away from your conservative parents asking why you don't have kids yet).

And third - is there an Germanization policy pushed by Vienna and/or Innsbruck? Should be pretty self explanatory. I know this is a no-WW2 TL, and probably an earlier WW1 peace too. But again, some things come down to the question - Are they seen as Ettore Tolomei or Alcide Degasperi? In other words, separatist or loyalist?

And yeah, I'm aware of the catholic stereotype of many children. And OTL Tyrol was the last Austrian Land who stopped tracking 'six or more births' in their statistical yearbooks...

So unless there is a serious reason for significant drain over the border to Italy - exceeding OTL in any case. Down from 175k to maybe 150k?

(Stuff some of those excess Tyroleans into Meran. And Brixen and Brunneck if it has to be South Tyrol - otherwise Hall can use some more. And Kufstein - certainly Kufstein. Wörgl too. Maybe even Jenbach, most importantly downriver from Innsbruck, there's space. Relatively. )

I thought the same, however I wasn't wether there could be other reasons for Klagenfurt's larger population. How does 125k-125k sound? Nice and simple.

Within spitting distance of each other, I'd assume. On the balance, more to Klagenfurt the relations are with Italy worse. Still, within 20k to each other in any case I'd say.

Those two things probably even themselves out. The higher population compared to OTL comes from absence of WW2's casualties. Imo, 125k is within reason.

Not quite balance out - there won't be the explosive growth from 32k-ish to 62k-ish from 1921 to 1939 that was mostly newly settled (souther) Italians. From about 1,5k Italian native speakers to a slightly over 31k (as in just over 50%) in the same period.
Option on the other hand - can't find numbers offhand for just Bolzano - those were less than 75k for all of South Tyrol-Trentino. So overall a quarter or so of the German speaking population, and some 20k or so did return again.
Mapping that 1:1 on Bolzano - not sure if that works - but you'd be at around 6k-ish Germans leaving in 1940-43 and not returning.
Even with more locals staying local, just moving from their alpine farm to the closest city?
I'd still go lower than the 125k - but with overall growth it's plausible.

For both of these cities, I thought their status as commuter cities to Vienna would naturally lead to such levels of growth IOTL. Was that off? Maybe their high growth could be a deliberate policy to "unburden" the overcrowded Vienna?

St Pölten, sure. Korneuburg, Stockerau, Tulln, Traiskirchen, too, if on a smaller scale because smaller.
Baden - probably local resistance to 'unburdening' Vienna. Just the impression I got of the place. Might back that up with the fact that Baden was Karl I.'s residence here for more than half the year of 1918. Lots of potential NIBY's with the best connections to court.

I didn't plan for any great mergers in Vorarlberg, that's why no city hit the 100k mark. I also estimated Dornbirn reaching about 75k ITTL. How feasible is the unification of the Bregenz-Dornbirn-Lustenau triangle? Is such thing really on the table? That would create quite a large city, which would certainly be included.

As I mentioned, an area deeply resistant to such things. But if Vienna or Innsbruck get ideas...

But no, nothing serious on that scale. Just a thought experiment, due to just how densely populated the area is without what could be considered an urban core. And an area I know quite a bit about.

There's Hofsteig that had some slight movement in such a direction, that's mostly ended up with tighter cooperation. Schwarzach, Bildstein, Buch, Lauterach, Hard - together some 38k OTL. Historically parts of Dornbirn (Haselstauden) belong there too, so there's an in. Kennelbach does have a non-voting seat in their cooperation agreement too, adding some 2k more people to it.
Then again, it was at one point a unified Gericht, one of those organisations I mentioned up on top, so...
And smack dab the centre of that triangle you mentioned.

Historically, there had been Rheinau - a Nazi era fusion of Gaisau, Fußach and Höchst. Some 14k OTL today's population. Might work out too.

And then there the Kummernbergregion, who are currently moving towards closer cooperation. No plans of fusion whatsoever however. Götzis, Altach, Koblach, Mäder. 28k inhabitants OTL.

There's a historical argument for Hohenems-Lustenau - some 40k inhabitants - but not so much geographical.

Of course, the logical one to be imposed from top down would probably adding the Hofsteig towns to Bregenz - making the capital of Vorarlberg more impressive - with 70k-ish OTL, that might just exceed those 100k TTL.

Did I say I knew the area, and had fun with thought experiments?

Preßburg would lack its position as capital of Slovakia and many people would chose to migrate straight to Vienna, imo. Administrative constraints would also play a role (no Transdanubian expansion). Atleast this was my reasoning why the population wouldn't get any higher. Sopron would also be there as an alternative option for Vienna-commutters. On another note, I think Žilina, Banská Bystrica or Nitra would better fill the role of the primary cultural centre of Slovaks.

You probably know those areas better than me.

And to be honest - it got away from me a bit. I'd assume pay and rent won't be quite as different as they are OTL today between Vienna and Bratislava.

Sopron does have a direct rail line to Vienna too, true. But I'm not sure if one could speed up the winding track of the Raaberbahn/GYSEV significantly compared to what it is today. Especially compared to the potential of pretty much all three lines to Bratislava. Though IIRC the Pressburger Bahn terminated south of the Danube - and it's nature as a tramline within Vienna probably doesn't allow that much higher speeds anyway.

And then there are those places I think as Austrian, but that TTL would still be across that (internal) border - Mattersburg, Eisenstadt, Neusiedl am See - places I know that OTL have daily commuters into Vienna living there. So TTL probably too.

 

[Fehérvári]

4) High Speed Rail

Rail is unfortunately also constrained by geography. It can get quite expensive to build at a certain point.
So aside from maybe an experimental interurban track on the over more than half of the distance straight as an arrow Marchegger Ostbahn, I'd assume that the first route to be built more or less has to be Vienna - Budapest. There's a few hills in the way - but nothing that should be impossible.

What are vanity projects if not expensive?
The Vienna-Budapest route is indeed the most logical "first". The Marchegger Ostbahn could be part of it.

From there the next expansion will probably be Vienna - Brünn, with an eye towards expansion towards Prague soon after. Maybe Krakow too.

Sounds logical. In the meantime, HSR lines could be built on the Hungarian plains as well. The terrain would make contructions relatively cheap. Budapest-Szabadka-Újvidék-Belgrade, Budapest-Szeged-Temesvár, Budapest-Debrecen-Nagyvárad; the terrain on all of these routes are completely flat. The only notable obstacles would be rivers.

Similarly I'd expect expansion work towards the West to follow soon after - depending a bit on relations with (South) Germany (Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg) with how much pressure.
Again, how unified Germany is, and how good relations are with one or the other part might influence the track to the West. Salzburg - and beyond that Munich and Innsbruck via Rosenheim might be the more interesting route internally - but also more challenging. Upriver along the Danube via Passau towards Nuernberg might be seen as a viable alternative. That might also lead to a loop via German territory back towards Pilsen and Prague.

I kind doubt however that a route further West will be 'fully' high speed. Internally the route via Zell is difficult terrain, and the route via Rosenheim and the Inntal then is pretty constrained too. Even current high speed in the Unterinntal is only planned for 220km/h - and that's underground to a significant amount of the route anyway.
Similarly extensions via the Brenner and Arlberg might be interesting - but unlikely to exceed that speed for reasons of difficult geography.

AFAIK, even if the entire route is not done >200km/h, the line can still be viewed as HSR. Or not?

What might however get the full high speed treatment is the Südbahn. The Semmering was the mountain that early Austrian railway engineers succeeded again - world first over that gradient - and it will have this near mythical reputation will all but force them to look into beating it again - this time with high speed rail. See also the OTL Semmering Basistunnel - not high speed by your definition - but something to look into. From there the usual Südbahn route seems okay-ish - Graz - Maribor - Celje is about as forgiving as that terrain gets, but before and after Lublijana there will be another pair of big challenges.

Wouldn't it make more sense for the HSR to follow the route of the OTL A2 Autobahn? Wouldn't that detour into the Styrian Alps be unnecessary, considering the HSR would not stop anywhere in that area?

With the amount of rail traffic the route will however generate - depending a bit on availability of alternative routes via Germany and/or the Danube - this will be one of, if not the most important railway route of the Empire.

So both prestige and economic reasons will push for more track in those directions - even if only to get those passengers off the routes cargo could use.

This, I agree.

Salzburg - Villach - Maribor and Linz - Graz however will probably not happen either - too mountainous to be really economically viable.

That's a shame, but I expected as much.

Seems we take a while to respond each time...

That we do, but that's how forums work, so that's fine

I had a long thought about that one. And I don't think so. Or more exactly, I think come of those feelings against municipal changes predate the dissolution of the Monarchy.
One is the common human resistance to change. So far so usual.

Okay noted. I will take that into account.

On the other...
I think it got something to do with the distance to authority, why the west is even more resistant to those.
Vorarlberg for example looked to Innsbruck at the closest for authority. At times as far as Freiburg/Breisgau, or even Ensisheim, that these days belongs to France. So it was local authorities that dealt with things. The Amann, the Gericht, not some distant authority. Unlike the inner Austrian Länder, they even got to send their own officials to the Kreistag in the Swabian Circle of the HRE, unlike those in the Austrian Circle who didn't have those.
What it also meant however is a deep in-group out-group idea, one that still echoes to today. Doesn't help of course that Vorarlberg speaks Allemanic, not Bavarian.
Similarly Tyrol, if for different reasons. Mountain valleys with a relative distant authority. Innsbruck might have a Hofburg, but who is the last one to reside there full time?
Maximilian I.
Everyone after was mostly just a regent.
Then there's the idea of the common Tyrolean, the Schütze, rising in defence of his own homeland - see Andreas Hofer and his fight against Napoleon long after the Habsburgs had surrendered those areas to the French ally Bavaria.
Meanwhile looking further east: Strong central power in Salzburg, Upper and Lower Austria were pretty centralised too, so was Styria. Not really sure what was going on in Carinthia, but they certainly couldn't point to a similar tradition of (relative) independence of the lowest government as Tyrol or Vorarlberg. Not when their own OTL history is mostly shaped by their post WWI relation towards Slovenia, overshadowing all before that, to the point where I simply don't know enough to tell.

Or I might be completely wrong, and that is just my own Western-Austrian bias showing.

Your reasoning is extremely convincing, that's for sure. It also aligns well with the little I know about the region.

Interesting.

Checks first: Yep, Vorarlberg down from 102 municipalities on there to to a mere 96 today...
Checking Innsbruck... Yep, exactly as I thought. Just those three of the core.

So that database takes the 1910 border - at least in the Austrian West.
Something to consider.

All of them are based on the 1910 borders. After all, these are the results of the 1910 census.

Them and those on the souther slopes, sure, those are the easiest annexations. Though the like of Mutters and Natters will bring some wealthy NIBY's with them.

Height of the city is in part restricted OTL due to the airport. Apparently there were some visiting Professors from the US in the early to mid 2000 that had panic attacks when seeing those planes approach the 'towers' (with their mere 12 stories IIRC) of the University.

With a different airport location, those restrictions could be relaxed however - though there might be some initiatives to 'preserve the Gründerzeit character' of the city anyway.

I said earlier - 170 000 to 190 000 in current borders. If you open up the airport, marshy as it might be, yeah, I think 200 000 should work out in current borders. Add the annexations? 230 000 to 240 000?

Not sure on the airport. Pilots need special training for steep approach on the current one. Might work for an alternate one between Völs and Zirl - just eyeballing the mountain elevations around there. Not sure what the rock cliffs on the north side of the Inn does to thermals however.

I think I will stick with 200k, all things considered. I will just assume that the relocation of the airfield is feasible.

Hm, Klosterneuburg, check. Langenzerdorf, Gerasdorf, Groß Enzersdorf, check. Might want to snag Deutsch-Wagram on the way, and those tiny places in between like Raasdorf. Good conservatives there, if anything. And not too much 'empty' land.

Okay, good idea.

Looks fine. 4,5m maybe on those borders?

I put it at 4 125 000. Should I up it?

(Then again, took a quick peek again at Nazi Groß Wien to refresh my memory: Höflein an der Donau? Seriously? That's way upstream. And down all those flyspecks to the south down to Moosbrunn?)

Nazi Greater Vienna was pretty much the definition of overkill, imo.

Down the Danube? Might be something that has to be considered with conservationist efforts in mind. There might be some Archduke or other who wants to keep those riparian forests as a hunting ground. Or you know, the thing that OTL were the founding events of the Green party of Austria, preserving those woods from hydro power. (Better to import gas from the Soviet Union...)
Annexing? Sure. Serious city expansion planing - putting those dense settlements on the ground a la Aspern Seestadt? Not so sure.

Understood. Expansion past the airport is off the table, then.

Though it makes one consider: Vienna will likely not be as overwhelmingly majority (Roman) Catholic as it is (was) OTL. Muslims from Bosnia, Ukraine Greek Catholic from Galicia, Protestants from Eastern Hungary...

I would guess the city's religious make up would mirror the entire federation's to some degree, albeit irreligious/atheist people would be quite a bit overrepresented (as in cities always).

Again, might be my Western Bias showing, but population aside, I always saw Salzburg as the 'second city' after Vienna.
But I can at least follow your arguments.

That's very interesting. I always assumed that Graz was the obvious second city. Reddit and others places on the internet moe or less reinforced this view of mind. Looks like in actuality, things are nowhere near that clear cut?

So yeah. Sound fine with those arguments.

Nice.

Or Leonding, Marchtrenk, Enns, St Valentin - plenty places in that area that might profit. But for simplicity sake - off those Wels and Steyr with them.

In the end, I upped Wels to 100k, kept Steyr at 100k, decreased Linz to 275k, but I kept Upper Austria at ~1 700 000 total.Let's say the missing 50k is distributed among smaller settlements.

250k with an agglomeration that is probably in relation to that. So maybe another 250k, since I assume growth there with hopefully less pressure due to prices in the city? For 500k for city+agglomeration?
The ones I'd have eyed up for further annexation would be Wals and Siezenheim (where there were IIRC plans in the 50s) and maybe Anif?

I estimated a total population for the duchy of about 650k ITTL. IOTL there are about 260k people living in the state outside of Salzburg+Umgebung. If there are 500k people living in Salzburg+Umgebung, then that would only leave us with about 150k for the rest of the duchy ITTL. Would the Umgebung really have another 250k people? If yes, then I guess I should increase the total population of the duchy.

Very difficult to say.
I'd say three elements: First, how are relations with Italy? There primarily, how easy is it to cross the border. Over the span of a century, not just the 'now'. Because as the Italians between the Germans and the Italian border - if it's on average easy to cross, with maybe even some courting for workers, but not migrants. Potentially in both directions. That would in my opinion help growth.

Relations with Italy is one of the many things I'm quite uncertain about concerning this scenario. Let's just say the two countries wouldn't have significant tensions between each other starting from the second half the the 20th century.

Second, how big a draw are other places? Just looking inside the monarchy. Vienna offers opportunity. Innsbruck might offer an Italian faculty. Trieste is that cosmopolitan harbour with a solid Italian plurality (probably) and might even offer an Italian language University (or simply to get away from your conservative parents asking why you don't have kids yet).

Could Trento develop anything that could give it some retention power?

And third - is there an Germanization policy pushed by Vienna and/or Innsbruck? Should be pretty self explanatory. I know this is a no-WW2 TL, and probably an earlier WW1 peace too. But again, some things come down to the question - Are they seen as Ettore Tolomei or Alcide Degasperi? In other words, separatist or loyalist?

I think Germanisation couldn't really be on the table once the federalisation is realised. There could be fears of similar policies being enacted in the other member states, after all.

And yeah, I'm aware of the catholic stereotype of many children. And OTL Tyrol was the last Austrian Land who stopped tracking 'six or more births' in their statistical yearbooks...

If you perhaps know, in what year was that?

So unless there is a serious reason for significant drain over the border to Italy - exceeding OTL in any case. Down from 175k to maybe 150k?

Alright.

(Stuff some of those excess Tyroleans into Meran. And Brixen and Brunneck if it has to be South Tyrol - otherwise Hall can use some more. And Kufstein - certainly Kufstein. Wörgl too. Maybe even Jenbach, most importantly downriver from Innsbruck, there's space. Relatively. )

How likely is for any of those places to reach 100k ITTL?

Within spitting distance of each other, I'd assume. On the balance, more to Klagenfurt the relations are with Italy worse. Still, within 20k to each other in any case I'd say.

My numbers are rounded to nearest 25k, so that works for me.

Not quite balance out - there won't be the explosive growth from 32k-ish to 62k-ish from 1921 to 1939 that was mostly newly settled (souther) Italians. From about 1,5k Italian native speakers to a slightly over 31k (as in just over 50%) in the same period.
Option on the other hand - can't find numbers offhand for just Bolzano - those were less than 75k for all of South Tyrol-Trentino. So overall a quarter or so of the German speaking population, and some 20k or so did return again.
Mapping that 1:1 on Bolzano - not sure if that works - but you'd be at around 6k-ish Germans leaving in 1940-43 and not returning.
Even with more locals staying local, just moving from their alpine farm to the closest city?
I'd still go lower than the 125k - but with overall growth it's plausible.

Then I guess I should go with 100k. Like this, Bozen is one of the few cities that didn't really change in size compared to OTL.

Baden - probably local resistance to 'unburdening' Vienna. Just the impression I got of the place. Might back that up with the fact that Baden was Karl I.'s residence here for more than half the year of 1918. Lots of potential NIBY's with the best connections to court.

So Baden wouldn't hit 100k in your opinion?

As I mentioned, an area deeply resistant to such things. But if Vienna or Innsbruck get ideas...

But no, nothing serious on that scale. Just a thought experiment, due to just how densely populated the area is without what could be considered an urban core. And an area I know quite a bit about.

I little thought experiment never hurts.

There's Hofsteig that had some slight movement in such a direction, that's mostly ended up with tighter cooperation. Schwarzach, Bildstein, Buch, Lauterach, Hard - together some 38k OTL. Historically parts of Dornbirn (Haselstauden) belong there too, so there's an in. Kennelbach does have a non-voting seat in their cooperation agreement too, adding some 2k more people to it.
Then again, it was at one point a unified Gericht, one of those organisations I mentioned up on top, so...
And smack dab the centre of that triangle you mentioned.

100k or not, the way you present it it sounds like these settlements might just actually unite.

Historically, there had been Rheinau - a Nazi era fusion of Gaisau, Fußach and Höchst. Some 14k OTL today's population. Might work out too.

What exactly was the motivator for the unification of those? Was there the building of a larger city in plan back then?

And then there the Kummernbergregion, who are currently moving towards closer cooperation. No plans of fusion whatsoever however. Götzis, Altach, Koblach, Mäder. 28k inhabitants OTL.

There's a historical argument for Hohenems-Lustenau - some 40k inhabitants - but not so much geographical.

If Diepoldsau would be "deattached" from Switzerland, then these two separate ideas could even be realised at the same time.

Of course, the logical one to be imposed from top down would probably adding the Hofsteig towns to Bregenz - making the capital of Vorarlberg more impressive - with 70k-ish OTL, that might just exceed those 100k TTL.

Without local support, even the most logically sound ideas could become stilborn. Still, on a scale from 0 to 10, how likely do you find such development?

Did I say I knew the area, and had fun with thought experiments?

Am I right to think that you're from the area? Also, I'm glad you found the experiment enjoyable!

You probably know those areas better than me.

That's not necessarily true. I haven't been to any of those, tbh. The only town I ever got to visit in Slovakia is Komárno.

And to be honest - it got away from me a bit. I'd assume pay and rent won't be quite as different as they are OTL today between Vienna and Bratislava.

Considering how much more expensive a larger Vienna could be, the rent difference might still be a huge attractor to Preßburg ITTL.

Sopron does have a direct rail line to Vienna too, true. But I'm not sure if one could speed up the winding track of the Raaberbahn/GYSEV significantly compared to what it is today.

Would building a new, straight line not be an option? AFAIK, there are no big obstacles in the way.

Especially compared to the potential of pretty much all three lines to Bratislava. Though IIRC the Pressburger Bahn terminated south of the Danube - and it's nature as a tramline within Vienna probably doesn't allow that much higher speeds anyway.

Same as above. Wouldn't the highspeed line be a new, separate track?

And then there are those places I think as Austrian, but that TTL would still be across that (internal) border - Mattersburg, Eisenstadt, Neusiedl am See - places I know that OTL have daily commuters into Vienna living there. So TTL probably too.

Mosonmagyaróvár too, probably. But all in all, should I increase the population of Preßburg after all?

 

[CASSICTOR2]

What are vanity projects if not expensive?
The Vienna-Budapest route is indeed the most logical "first". The Marchegger Ostbahn could be part of it.

Sounds logical. In the meantime, HSR lines could be built on the Hungarian plains as well. The terrain would make contructions relatively cheap. Budapest-Szabadka-Újvidék-Belgrade, Budapest-Szeged-Temesvár, Budapest-Debrecen-Nagyvárad; the terrain on all of these routes are completely flat. The only notable obstacles would be rivers.

AFAIK, even if the entire route is not done >200km/h, the line can still be viewed as HSR. Or not?

Wouldn't it make more sense for the HSR to follow the route of the OTL A2 Autobahn? Wouldn't that detour into the Styrian Alps be unnecessary, considering the HSR would not stop anywhere in that area?

This, I agree.

That's a shame, but I expected as much.

That we do, but that's how forums work, so that's fine

Okay noted. I will take that into account.

Your reasoning is extremely convincing, that's for sure. It also aligns well with the little I know about the region.

All of them are based on the 1910 borders. After all, these are the results of the 1910 census.

I think I will stick with 200k, all things considered. I will just assume that the relocation of the airfield is feasible.

Okay, good idea.

I put it at 4 125 000. Should I up it?

Nazi Greater Vienna was pretty much the definition of overkill, imo.

Understood. Expansion past the airport is off the table, then.

I would guess the city's religious make up would mirror the entire federation's to some degree, albeit irreligious/atheist people would be quite a bit overrepresented (as in cities always).

That's very interesting. I always assumed that Graz was the obvious second city. Reddit and others places on the internet moe or less reinforced this view of mind. Looks like in actuality, things are nowhere near that clear cut?

Nice.

In the end, I upped Wels to 100k, kept Steyr at 100k, decreased Linz to 275k, but I kept Upper Austria at ~1 700 000 total.Let's say the missing 50k is distributed among smaller settlements.

I estimated a total population for the duchy of about 650k ITTL. IOTL there are about 260k people living in the state outside of Salzburg+Umgebung. If there are 500k people living in Salzburg+Umgebung, then that would only leave us with about 150k for the rest of the duchy ITTL. Would the Umgebung really have another 250k people? If yes, then I guess I should increase the total population of the duchy.

Relations with Italy is one of the many things I'm quite uncertain about concerning this scenario. Let's just say the two countries wouldn't have significant tensions between each other starting from the second half the the 20th century.

Could Trento develop anything that could give it some retention power?

I think Germanisation couldn't really be on the table once the federalisation is realised. There could be fears of similar policies being enacted in the other member states, after all.

If you perhaps know, in what year was that?

Alright.

How likely is for any of those places to reach 100k ITTL?

My numbers are rounded to nearest 25k, so that works for me.

Then I guess I should go with 100k. Like this, Bozen is one of the few cities that didn't really change in size compared to OTL.

So Baden wouldn't hit 100k in your opinion?

I little thought experiment never hurts.

100k or not, the way you present it it sounds like these settlements might just actually unite.

What exactly was the motivator for the unification of those? Was there the building of a larger city in plan back then?

If Diepoldsau would be "deattached" from Switzerland, then these two separate ideas could even be realised at the same time.

Without local support, even the most logically sound ideas could become stilborn. Still, on a scale from 0 to 10, how likely do you find such development?

Am I right to think that you're from the area? Also, I'm glad you found the experiment enjoyable!

That's not necessarily true. I haven't been to any of those, tbh. The only town I ever got to visit in Slovakia is Komárno.

Considering how much more expensive a larger Vienna could be, the rent difference might still be a huge attractor to Preßburg ITTL.

Would building a new, straight line not be an option? AFAIK, there are no big obstacles in the way.

Same as above. Wouldn't the highspeed line be a new, separate track?

Mosonmagyaróvár too, probably. But all in all, should I increase the population of Preßburg after all?

Surprised that you're still here but this is very good post man

But would not have a talk about one people in this Thread: the Romani population in the Surviving AH

 

[Fehérvári]

Surprised that you're still here but this is very good post man

Thanks. My interest never waned on the topic, I just have many other things to deal with. Working out the exact scenario and creating maps also take up some of the time I dedicate to this TL. Still, every now and then, I revisit this thread.

But would not have a talk about one people in this Thread: the Romani population in the Surviving AH

That's a landmine of a topic.

 

[CASSICTOR2]

Thanks. My interest never waned on the topic, I just have many other things to deal with. Working out the exact scenario and creating maps also take up some of the time I dedicate to this TL. Still, every now and then, I revisit this thread.

Entertain topic as well because they're very interesting to speculate about the Demographic of AH in 2019 before the 2020s, Fehervrai

That's a landmine of a topic.

Well I do get very controversial talk about it, I say we can be reasonable about it and estimate what the Romani population is especially since no Porajmos happening this TL.

But if you don't want to talk about this topic I will understand

 

[Fehérvári]

Entertain topic as well because they're very interesting to speculate about the Demographic of AH in 2019 before the 2020s, Fehervrai

I made my first thread about this exact topic back in 2020, that's why I use 2019 as a reference point. Also, considering how hectic the '20s has been so far, one could say that 2019 was the last year when there were no strange and extraordinary events disrupting the world economy. So that's another reason I stick to that year.

Well I do get very controversial talk about it, I say we can be reasonable about it and estimate what the Romani population is especially since no Porajmos happening this TL.

Well, there's problem with the lack of data, in the first place.

 

[Aghasverov]

Well, there's problem with the lack of data, in the first place

I've wondered about this as well...
I'm not all that familiar with the A-H census data, but how were the Romani counted?
I know that in the 1897 Russian Census, that there were only 45,000 people counted as Romani in the ENTIRE Russian Empire... which seems to me to be far too low.
I suppose there were considerable difficulties, then as now, in tabulating data on transient/migratory peoples....

 

[CASSICTOR2]

I made my first thread about this exact topic back in 2020, that's why I use 2019 as a reference point. Also, considering how hectic the '20s has been so far, one could say that 2019 was the last year when there were no strange and extraordinary events disrupting the world economy. So that's another reason I stick to that year.

I wonder how AH well react and function going to the Chaos of 2020s would be like Fehervrai?

Well, there's problem with the lack of data, in the first place.

Well fuck then but don't fret because some management even though I might not be accurate enough.

We can use this map as reference and yes I know it will be difficult to differentiate the Balkans states and Transylvania of their Romani population but It's still better than nothing to speculate on.

Now using your model of the Modern AH population in those previous AH country (this isn't counting Transylvania and the Balkan States) then the population of Romani of AH will be over 412,460 Danubian Romani.

Now keep in mind this is not including Transylvania and the other Balkan States which will be difficult to estimate but at least we have a figure to manage

I've wondered about this as well...
I'm not all that familiar with the A-H census data, but how were the Romani counted?
I know that in the 1897 Russian Census, that there were only 45,000 people counted as Romani in the ENTIRE Russian Empire... which seems to me to be far too low.
I suppose there were considerable difficulties, then as now, in tabulating data on transient/migratory peoples....

Yeah they are the people who can migrate and would not like being counted on a demographic graph on the country that they dislike

 

[CASSICTOR2]

Remember this may not be accurate because of the estimation of the Romani population in Europe as does estimation that hungary have over 300-820,000 of Romani citizens.

This graph may not be accurate because of that fact so we need to be extremely careful what we are saying because the estimations are may not be accurate even in our sources