Demographic change is a main driving force all over Europe. The population within most mountain regions of the Alpine Space already today differs from the surrounding me-tropolitans. Beside the general trend of the aging of the Europeans there exist additional Alpine specific factors of regional different influence: migration (in – out), commuting (rural to urban areas) settlement and housing (costs - quality), change of regional demand for public services (e.g. transport, healthcare, education) or the change of consumer behavior in key economies (e.g. nutrition, tourism). DEMOCHANGE provides general adaptation strategies for Alpine regions to their spatial plans and regional development programs. Thirteen partners will elaborate concrete strategies in ten model regions and implement them by pilot actions. The regional achieved results will be merged to general strategies and disseminated by an exchange network.

At the kick-off meeting in November 2009, project partners of DEMOCHANGE fixed working plans, exchanged regional diverse positions and agreed definitions of key information for the model regions (e. g. demographic, economic, tourism data). On the way to achieve the first milestone of the project, the basic and in-depth analyses of the model regions, the DEMOCHANGE project partners have already elaborated a detailed list of indicators for data collection. By now, the partners are collecting relevant quantitative and qualitative data of each preselected alpine model region. In the meantime, DEMOCHANGE has also started to activate relevant stakeholders and politicians in the model regions. As demographic change will affect people’s present and future life significantly, DEMOCHANGE is trying to create a better common understanding of this issue at the regional level.

At this early stage of project implementation, the focus was set on the development of strategies in the fields of communication and scientific work. The basic catalogue of indicators for the demographic impact analysis was discussed among the partners and has been iteratively improved. For further work progress, it is essential to establish regional steering groups in order to identify demographic trends and regional needs within the respective regions. Therefore, a procedure for the systematic identification of stakeholders has been developed by the partners. The project partners also got in contact with regional actors as well as with regional and national planning authorities. To arouse people’s interest and inform about the project in a professional way, DEMOCHANGE created a corporate design, an information brochure and a project website. First results of this effort are visible on www.demochange.org.

First data collection and analysis have to be completed to get a solid basis for further discussion of demographic change in the model regions. The tested tools to activate stakeholders will be used in each model region. The next main step in DEMOCHANGE will be the installation of regional steering groups. They will discuss the outcome of the analysis and define the main fields of actions. First steps towards the development of adaptation strategies will be taken.