Mountain cities specializing in tourism increasingly aim at valorizing cultural and natural heritage to compete for global attention. In this context, the postmodern urbanization of mountains plays a decisive role: driven by touristification processes, it alters the sociospatial and economic configuration of mountain cities and their hinterlands, which are becoming vertically arranged “operational landscapes”, and profoundly changes city–mountain interactions. To foster sustainable development in urbanizing mountain destinations, it is crucial to understand these settlements’ embeddedness in both (1) nature and culture and (2) space and time. The Andean city of Huaraz is a case in point: an intermediate center in highland Peru, it is characterized by a strategic location in the Callejón de Huaylas (Santa Valley), influenced by Hispanic and Quechua culture and dominated by the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca. Combining (1) a theoretical framework that considers planetary urbanization, touristification and vertical complementarity and (2) a case study technique inspired by urban environmental profiles, we trace the development of the city–mountain relation in Huaraz, focusing on the way in which the material and non-material dimensions of the surrounding mountains influence urban development. We conclude with a call for overcoming a set of three persisting dichotomies that continue to impair sustainable development.

Mountain regions face decisive challenges, not only for their sustainable development but also fortheir very reproduction. These challenges have to do with the increasingly serious impact of climate and environmental change, the impact of socioeconomic and cultural globalization on mountain populations and the ecosystems they inhabit, and the effects of urbanization on mountain agriculture. Based on these premises, this article introduces the notion of “montology” by investigating, on the one hand, the historical development of the term and, on the other, by presenting the essential principles of a perspective committed to building a real transdisciplinarity in mountain studies. Finally, through the example of urbanization and its impact on Andean agriculture, we intend to highlight the need to adopt a montological perspective in order to contribute to the analysis of human environmental problems and to the sustainable development of the region. Las regiones de montaña se enfrentan con retos decisivos, no solamente para su desarrollo sustentable sino para su misma reproducción. Estos retos tienen que ver con el impacto cada vez más serio del cambio climático y ambiental, la incidencia que la globalización socio-económica y cultural tiene en las poblaciones de montaña y en los ecosistemas que éstas habitan, además de los efectos de la urbanización en la agricultura de montaña. A partir de estas premisas, el presente artículo introduce la noción de «montología» indagando, por un lado, el desarrollo histórico del término y, por el otro, presentando los principios esenciales de una perspectiva empeñada en construir una transdisciplinariedad real en los estudios de montaña. Finalmente, a través del ejemplo de la urbanización y sus repercusiones en la agricultura andina pretendemos evidenciar la necesidad de adoptar una perspectiva montológica para así contribuir al análisis de los problemas humano-ambientales y al desarrollo sustentable de la región.

Mountains are commonly considered a rural or even wild counterpart to cities. But, is this view still relevant in times of “planetary urbanization”? What is actually “wild,” “rural,” and “urban,” and how do these categories differ in structural and/or functional terms? Are there urban specificities in mountains? Drawing on the concepts of planetary urbanization and verticality, and introducing examples from the Global North and South, this chapter presents a central theme of urban montology, the sustainability-oriented, transdisciplinary study of urbanizing mountain environments: rural–urban linkages between altitudinal zones. Ecosystemic, infrastructural, demographic, economic, and sociocultural linkages in mountains present numerous peculiarities due to relief and altitude of the urbanizing environment. “Flows” of mountain ecosystem services, cable cars linking valleys and peaks, vertical spatial mobility of people, and the deliberate use of alpine environments and identities for branding mountain cities—to attract investors and visitors—are just a few examples that underline the increasing interconnectedness of the former counterparts of intrinsically “urban” cities and “rural” (or “wild”) mountains. This must be taken into account when studying and facilitating the transition of urbanizing mountain spaces into places worth living in for humans and nonhumans.

To ensure sustainable endogenous development of the Andean region, research on and for the dominant mountain range of South Americais of crucial importance. As of 2021, the Revista de Investigaciones Altoandinas - Journal of High Andean Research adopts a reformededitorial policy and presents a relaunch of its publishing portal, with the aim to foster sustainable development in and for the Andeanregion. Para asegurar el desarrollo endógeno sostenible de la región andina, la investigación sobre y para la cadena montañosa dominante de América del Sur tiene una importancia crucial. A partir de 2021, la Revista de Investigaciones Altoandinas - Journal of High Andean Research adopta una política editorial reformada y presenta un relanzamiento de su portal de publicación, con el fin de fomentar el desarrollo sostenible en y para la regiónandina.

Under the influence of concentrated and extended urbanization, Andean cities and the different altitudinal zones of their “hinterlands” are experiencing profound changes in land cover — from the central plazas up to the highest peaks. The complex regional-geographic characteristics of these socioecological systems, such as the vertical complementarity of land use, require a montological perspective on verticality and urbanization: it transcends disciplinary approaches and can be crucial to properly interpret the trajectories of land cover change and formulate hypotheses for future practice-oriented research. Which trajectories of land cover change characterized altitudinal zones of Andean cities and their surroundings over the last three decades? Are there similarities that allow for the formulation of more general hypotheses? Using the Peruvian cases of Cusco and Huaraz, and combining a traditional altitudinal zonation model of land use in Peru with direct field observations and GIS-based analyses of remotely sensed data from 1991, 2001, 2011, and 2021, this study identifies the main trajectories of land cover change in the Quechua (>2300–3500 m), Suni (>3500–4000 m), and Puna (>4000–4800 m) regions — and finds insightful similarities between Cusco and Huaraz: (1) an impressive area of built-up land substitutes grassland in the Quechua, which, following regional altitudinal zonation models, is characterized by irrigated and rain-fed cropland; (2) an unexpected expansion of irrigated cropland takes place in the Suni, which, in theory, often lacks irrigation infrastructure and is mostly used for rain-fed tuber cultivation; and (3) a clear change from “other land” to grassland occurs in the Puna — where grassland is thought to predominate, anyway, since pre-Hispanic times. Hypothesizing that these changes reflect the interplay between speculative fallow, agricultural intensification, and ecological restoration, the results can be read as vertically complementary, local manifestations of concentrated and extended urbanization in a formerly peripheral mountain region of the Global South — and they underscore the need to overcome mental city-mountain dichotomies for a socially inclusive and ecologically balanced Andean development between plaza and peak.