Ljubljana, March 17/18 2011

All DEMOCHANGE project partners followed the invitation by the Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia and the Regional Development Agency for Upper Gorenjska to join the 4th DEMOCHANGE transnational partner meeting in Ljubljana.

The model region Upper Gorenjska

On Thursday, 17th March 2011, first day of the meeting, the project partners got the possibility to visit the model region Upper Gorenjska by a guided bus tour from Ljubljana to the municipality of Bohinj, passing by lake Bled and its wonderful island. The model region consits of four municipialities (Bohinj, Bled, Kranjska Gora, Gorje) and ist part of the Gorenjska statistical region. It counts 21,584 people, which represent 11% of Gorenjska region. The settlement is concentrated in plains and valleys, while there are only nuclear villages and secluded farms in higher altitudes. From a demographical point of view, the model region registered an intensified migration process in the last ten years. Further interesting facts are that the average age of population incereases faster than else where in Slovenia and that female of age 15 to 49 present 44% of the the whole female population in the region. People live in samaller households, this is to say, that  the highest percentage of 1-member-households can be found in Kranjska Gora.  

DEMOCHANGE working sessions

The first working session took place in Bohinjska Bistrica, the centre of Bohinj municipality, where the representative of Bohinj municipality,
Mrs. Iva Lapajne (Department of Economics and Social Activities), welcomed all project partners.

Day one of the transnational partner meeting was focused on general information regarding the procedure of the DEMOCHANGE project and the organiziation of the midterm conference. The project partners of the Urban Planning Institute presented different data on the demographic change analysis collected so far by each project partner. The collected data will be published in a "Short regional report" quite soon. In addition to this, the Swiss project partners gave a brief insight on how the handbook on "How to establish a local steering group" will look like. The Swiss project partners will be the hosting partners for the transnational workshop, which will take place in Mai 2011 in Lucerne.

Mr. Janez Fajfar, Mayor of Municipality Bled, joined the partners to a traditional Slowenian dinner in Begunje na Gorensjskren.

On Friday, 18th March, once back to the beautiful city of Ljubljana, the working session continued at the Urban Planning Instiute.  Project partners involved in the adaption pilot actions, presented their next steps in the elaboration and implementation of measures, the evaluation of adaption needs and the development of common strategies and related pilot actions linked to planning. Th meeting was concluded by the presentation of planned actions to be taken for the analysis of the pilot actions from all model regions in order to create generalized adaptation strategies, roadmaps and activities for the alpine space.

Istanbul - luglio 2010

DEMOCHANGE was presented and referred to in one of the presentations at the 22nd Conference of the European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) in Istanbul, Turkey 4-7 July, 2010.

This Network is composed of researchers from a variety of social science disciplines dealing with housing and urban issues. In addition to its basic goal of supporting research, the Network also seeks to promote contacts and communications between researchers and practitioners within the housing field. It has more than 1000 individual and nearly 100 institutional members representing every country in Europe.  ENHR also provides a framework for twenty working groups. Major international conferences are organised biennial. This years conference in Istanbul was entitled "Urban Dynamics & Housing Change".

Boštjan Kerbler, member of the DEMOCHANGE team (Urban Planning Institute of the Republic of Slovenia) participated at the conference in the working group "Housing & living conditions of ageing populations". The Working group focused on different generations or age groups i.e. from seniors (e.g. 55+) to the very old (e.g. 95+), all within a large and growing part of ageing populations. The elderly live in different economic situations, with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and have various abilities/disabilities as well as different interests and preferences. They live in different environments with a multitude of lifestyles and gender related conditions. All these diversities which call for different approaches are considered within the research focus of this ENHR Working group.

Boštjan Kerbler presented the situation of elderly people in Slovenia, with a special emphasis on caring for the elderly population in peripheral areas of Slovenia, including the Alpine parts.

Vienna - maggio 2010

In May 2010 the "15th International Conference on Urban Planning
and Regional Development in the Information society" took place in Vienna and was organized by CORP (Competence Center of Urban and Regional Planning).

The main topic was "Cities for Everyone - Liveable, Healthy, Properous - Promising vision or unrealistic fantasy?". Several guest speakers were giving lectures about urban planning, real estate development, transport and environmental development. Afterwards the participants were able to join in at workshops or to discuss with the guest and keynote speakers.

Franz Dollinger, Thomas Prinz, Wolfgang Spitzer and Heidrun Wankiewicz were the representatives of the DEMOCHANGE project. They were presenting a paper with the idea of DEMOCHANGE and came up with the an insistent warning not to underestimate or forget about demographic change. Furthermore, some project-results of the pilot region Pinzgau, Pongau and Lungau were presented.