The report was prepared by the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities (CFE), led by Lamia Kamal-Chaoui. It was produced as part of the programme of work of the Regional Development Policy Committee. The project was implemented in the context of the OECD “Shrinking Smartly and Sustainably” project. It was made possible thanks to the financial contributions of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO).
The report was co-ordinated by Marc Bournisien de Valmont, and reviewed by Dorothée Allain-Dupré, Head of the Regional Development and Multi-level Governance Division and Rüdiger Ahrend, Head of Economic Analysis, Data and Statistics Division in the CFE.
The introduction and chapter 1 (A policy framework and policy recommendations to address demographic change) were drafted by Marc Bournisien de Valmont, with inputs from all authors. Chapter 2 (Demographic trends in OECD countries: towards a definition of depopulating places) was prepared by Alexandre Banquet, Claudia Baranzelli, Ana Moreno Monroy, and Cem Özgüzel. Chapter 3 (Adapting spatial planning, housing and infrastructure to demographic change) was developed by Andrés Fuentes Hutfilter, Matteo Schleicher, Caroline Gentet-Raskopf and Ha-Young Jeon. Chapter 4 (Adapting multi-level governance, finance, service and infrastructure provision to demographic change) was prepared by Isabelle Chatry and Miquel Vidal Bover. David Burgalassi and Tadashi Matsumoto (Cities, Urban Policies and Sustainable Development Division in the CFE) made valuable contributions to chapters 1 and 2.
The full report benefited from input and comments from Nadim Ahmad, Deputy Director of CFE; José Enrique Garcilazo, Claire Charbit, Jeanette Duboys, Margaux Tharaux, and Courtenay Wheeler, in the CFE Regional Development and Multi-level Governance Division; Jaebeum Cho, in the CFE Economic Analysis, Data and Statistics Division; and Camille Viros and Eleanor West, in the CFE Cities, Urban Policies and Sustainable Development Division.
The OECD wishes to extend special thanks to Martijn Brons and Jorge Durán Laguna (European Commission, DG REGIO) for their support and input provided throughout the preparation of the report.
The Organisation also warmly thanks the members of the Consultation Group of the “Shrinking Smartly and Sustainably” project: Lewis Dijkstra, Team Leader at the Urban and Territorial Analysis department of the Joint Research Centre, and Visiting Professor in Practice in LSE; Albert Esteve, Director of the Demographic Studies Centre (CED) and Professor Department of Sociology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain; Anne Goujon, Population and Just Societies Program Director at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria; Vlad Mykhnenko, Associate Professor of Sustainable Urban Development & Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom; Karina Pallagst, Professor at the Department of International Planning Systems of the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany; Marco Percoco, Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of Università Bocconi, Italy; Josefina Syssner, Senior Associate Professor at Linköping University, Sweden; and Jiří Tintěra, Municipal architect in Tartu municipality, and Senior Lecturer at Tallinn University of Technology-Tartu college, Estonia.
The OECD also thanks Andrew Esson for his services in designing infographics in chapters 2 and 4.
Finally, thanks are extended to Jack Waters (CFE) who provided guidance on preparing the publication, and to Roxana Glavanov (CFE) for external communications throughout the project.