Not every country has equal and equitable distribution of wealth and resources within its borders. Using my country as an example, there are towns and villages that have problems accessing clean water and electricity due to scarce or shoddy infrastructure, while others are so remote that even catching easily curable diseases could become a life and death situation due to the difficulty in accessing medical services. Politics can play a part too, with corrupt politicians pocketing much needed funds for the funding and development of roads, electric plants, and other forms of infrastructure.
As part of the Western world, European nations are often seen as having the best modern infrastructure for providing basic amenities and services to their people. However, Europe is not a single entity. There are differences in how each nation governs itself, leading to varying rates of disparity in the quality of infrastructure between provinces, regions, areas, and other locations within their borders. So whether through political, geological, economical, technological, cultural, religious, or societal reasons, what locations in your European country are significantly less developed in modern infrastructure that you know of?
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The roads in western Norway are a f##king tragedy. Northern Norway doesn’t have trains. But, pretty much the whole country has good communication infrastructure and other amenities. I’ve only really lived in larger towns and cities, but I’ve always had good internet and uninterrupted electricity (except for one storm that cut electricity for all of northern Norway, and scheduled maintenance).
As for water, you can drink the water straight from the tap in the whole country (and it’s good). But there are times that there’ll be a Giardia outbreak and people will have to boil it for a week while authorities fix the problem.
Edit: I should point out that western Norway has problems with terrain and rock slides when it comes to road building. But many of the smaller roads even in Bergen, will f##k your car up if you’re not careful or have low ground clearance.
Our country is so densely populated I don’t think we have parts where the quality is significant lower. There are some good quality new roads in the more remote areas of the country. I do think the quantity is lower is some areas. So a train rides only once an hour instead of every 15 minutes in the Randstad area, the most populated area of the country. Obviously you only find metro systems in the biggest cities.
Also, in small villages there are fewer or no busses. The last decade due to privatization the least profitable bus lines were scaled down or cancelled, which where the bus lines to smaller villages. Which decrease the liveability of those places.
Running water, electricity and internet are everywhere. Although till a couple of years ago some remote farms had very slow internet and where connected to faster internet just a few years ago.
As many are aware, traditionally, southern Italy is, for complex historical reasons, an economically depressed region. Other regions were, but have experienced some development in recent years: Veneto, previously a predominantly agricultural area, industrialised in the 1980s, and has since become one of the leading regions of the Italian economy along with Lombardy (but at the expense of others such as certain areas of Piedmont that have experienced partial economic stagnation); Abruzzo, a southern region that, according to some data I consulted some time ago (but which may be a little out of date), is experiencing a certain development; or Sardinia, which used to be a very poor island with an agricultural-pastoral character, but which is catching up in development, thanks also to the tourist flows it has become a destination.
Extremadura, in souther spain.
The region is huge but barely has 1 million people living in it. Lots of rural roads, very few trains or buses.
Absolutely beautifull and filled with history (the best Iberico ham comes from here). Perfect to run away from justice.
No region lacks the normal amenities like running water or internet. The more remote areas have less public and especially private services so you have to drive further to get to them. It’s just that a big portion of Finland is basically empty and it’s not worth it to provide everything to few inhabitants.
Usually development goes with GDP, and countries with lowest gdp per capita can be found here:
[https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gdp-per-capita-ppp?continent=europe](https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gdp-per-capita-ppp?continent=europe)
Having said that I dont think you will find many places withour clean water and electricity, and I doubt any of them will be within EU
Traditionally it has been Athens vs the rest of the country, but there have been some serious investments into infrastructure since the late 1990s.
Some glaring omissions still remain, like the west-to-east motorway on the island of Crete (which is under construction), but the priority was to complete the motorways connected with our international borders.
In Spain, Madrid in the center act as a black hole for resources. Regions that surround Madrid and have no coast are getting empty and old. Castilla la Mancha, Castilla Leon and Extremadura are demographic deserts.
Unfortunately here, when you move from the coast into the interior of the country, the difference in development is very noticeable.
We have very few big cities, even to our standard of what a big city is.
Electricity and water are not a problem in Germany, but health care, internet, public transport and groceries are a different topic.
Basically everyone who does not live within a bigger city is lucky to even have a functional internet connection. Some rural areas still aren’t connected or the connections are super slow, often less than 2MBit/s. Same goes for the mobile network, in some rural areas you just end up without coverage.
Public transport in most rural areas is a mess. People there NEED to own a car because public transport is awful, like one bus late morning when most working hours have started already, one early evening when most people are still working. Unusable for most people who need to get to work or for kids who need to go to school. And there are almost no health providers in rural areas left, having a medical emergency gets dangerous quickly because it takes ages for help to arrive or until you can make it to a doctor. Supermarkets are becoming fewer and fewer, so people have to drive further away for basic necessities.
The reason why so many Germans are against “going green” or rather the plans of our Green Party isn’t that they don’t want to, it’s just that infrastructure for public transport is missing in many rural areas and they just CAN NOT survive without a car. Some of our politicians aren’t seeing their need for better infrastructure at all.
The Scottish Highlands without a doubt.
Generally speaking the infrastructure was suitable enough for the local residents, but a recent (~10 year) boom in tourism has led to the road infrastructure being overwhelmed completely.
In places you are several hours from the nearest hospital and proper supermarket. There are also countless single points of failure, where a single road closure due to flooding or landslide can cause detours in the hours. If the Hope Bridge on the North coast of Scotland closes, it’s a 3.5 hour, 120 mile detour.
Internet is almost always copper ADSL so you’re going to be capped around 60mb/s as well.
I would say Moldova for Romania, not by much but that doesn’t say much if you look how bad Romanias infrastructure is in general
Many parts of Romania are underdeveloped. There are no highways in Maramures (north), Moldova (northeast) and Oltenia (southwest).
A few cities like Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara or Brașov are having living standards above the EU average, while the majority of Romania is living in poor conditions. As a rule you are better the closer you are to the west (Transylvania, Banat) or Bucharest. Iasi is a large city that started to develop more recently but it’s too isolated from the rest of the country due to poor infrastructure.
Western Ukraine used to less developed in infrastructure and in the term of industries because it is a mountainous region with many natural protected areas.
But after somebody came and destroyed the industrial east I am not so sure.