Title:	Coping with Demographic Change in the Alpine Regions
Authors:	Thomas Bausch Madeleine Koch Alexander Veser
Keywords:	Coping
Issue Date:	2014
Publisher:	Springer
Description:	The Alpine Space covers an area of about 1,200 km in length and 250 km in width. It is situated between and linking the Northern and Western European countries with the European South and is a living area for nearly 70 million people, including the major cities e.g. Vienna, Munich, Milano, Ljubljana, Zurich at the edge of the predominantly mountainous area. The cultural and economic appearance of the Alpine Space has always been shaped by the natural characteristics of the Alps—their topography, ecology and beauty—which gave a distinct influence to the development of regional societies. In today’s increasingly globalizing world, slowly but steadily a challenge rises which gives fundamental changes to the Alpine societies in the near future: demographic change. The changing age structures of the Alpine populations and a shifting social and ethnic composition of traditional societies are main challenges for the future development within the Alpine societies. Moreover, regional disparities within the Alpine Space, resulting from an unbalanced economic and supply infrastructure, the remoteness of some areas and several migration patterns, have a massive but uneven impact on the spatial and temporal dynamics of demographic change on national, regional and local scale level within all Alpine countries. The challenges and opportunities given by the demographic change need to be taken into consideration by politicians, scientific experts, planners and regional developers, when thinking about the future of the Alpine Space societies. By previous regional development projects we got aware that demographic appraisal showed enormous development disparities within seeming homogeneous regions. Furthermore, some policy makers and spatial planners in Alpine countries developed a vague feeling that demographic change might become a major problem in the future, but that the issue was not at all on top of the Alpine agenda. We recognized a lack of suitable adaptation strategies and actions in response to demographic change and took this as starting point for the pan-Alpine project DEMOCHANGE. The project “DEMOCHANGE—Demographic Change in the Alps: Adaptation Strategies to Spatial Planning and Regional Development” was funded by the Alpine Space Programme 2007–2013 out of the European Regional Development Fund.
URI:	http://10.6.20.12:80/handle/123456789/52656
ISBN:	978-3-642-54681-5
Appears in Collections:	Population Studies

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