Regional atlases today and tendencies of their development

Summary

This paper examines the evolution and contemporary tendencies of regional integrated atlases through a comparative analysis of major publications from Germany, Austria, France, the United States, Canada, and the Soviet Union. The study employs a systematic content assessment, using a comparative table to quantify the thematic composition and balance of atlas sections—nature, population, economy, and culture—across nineteen historical and modern atlases. The analysis reveals that early German regional atlases, such as the Atlas of Pomerania, displayed progressive cartographic techniques alongside politically biased content. The post-war German Federal Republic's Planning Atlas series adopted a unified framework with a pronounced statistical-economic orientation but often neglected the synthesis of natural conditions and lacked internal map consistency. Austrian atlases, exemplified by those of Lower Austria and Salzburg, exhibit a strong local-studies tradition, featuring extensive historical, settlement, and cultural maps, yet they reveal weaknesses in demographic and socio-economic coverage and occasional cartographic shortcomings. More recent atlases from France, North America, and the Soviet Union show increasing practical applications for regional planning and resource management, yet the balance between analytical detail and geographic synthesis remains inconsistent. The paper concludes that regional atlases are increasingly oriented toward practical planning needs, but their development requires greater emphasis on interdisciplinary integration, improved comparability of data across maps, and a more systematic incorporation of natural conditions to support comprehensive territorial analysis.