Strategies and Roadmaps for Planning and Implementation: A Guide for Action

Abstract

Spatial planning and regional development strategies, designed to support adaptation to demographic change, are presented. An orientation and decision support tool is portrayed which can be employed by decision-makers and executives in spatial planning and regional development, to design and implement suitable adaptation strategies and action to address demographic change in the Alpine Space. This chapter presents both, an outline of more general principles for strategic orientation on one side and strategic “building blocks” for some specific fields of action (children, youth and families; seniors and on-going ageing of society; migration) on the other. The strict institutional separation of regional planning and regional development is identified as a major obstacle for strategy development and implementation addressing demographic change. Several of the objectives and measures related to demographic change in the Alpine Space cannot be attributed to either regional planning, or regional development, accurately. Hence, in practice these two closely related and interdependent areas of planning and implementation are viewed and treated as separate and independent areas of expertise, with different and/or contradictory competencies and competence levels in the various countries of the Alpine Space. The model presented may help to overcome some of these shortcomings by using a number of elementary strategic building blocks that can be applied to both, to spatial planning and to regional development.