Prospective study of population aging in Verviers District (wallonia, belgium).

Aging population has become an important issue and challenge in most Western Europe countries. This substantive change is likely to deeply affect the structure and the way our societies work (European commission, 2012a). Furthermore, aging population and its consequences are now a sensitive topic in policy at both European and national levels, especially concerning budget discussions and the increased societal costs linked to the phenomenon (European commission, 2012b). However, at more local scales, the topic is not fully integrated in urban or regional policies yet. This situation can be seen as a paradox since local collectivities will have to concretely deal with the impacts and the growing needs linked to ageing (Mercenier and Mérette, 2001; Rosenberg and Everitt, 2001). This current action research was initiated by the subregional comity for employment and training for the Verviers district. It primarily aims at bringing out the needs and wishes of the aging population living in the French-speaking part of Verviers district (20 municipalities and 200.000 inhabitants). Considering the number and the diversity of territorial actors involved (services providers, public institutions, politicians, training services, NPOs, public transportation, labor and employer unions, etc.) and topics (housing, nursing and health care, home services, mobility etc.), the project managers naturally leaned toward territorial intelligence methods and participatory governance models. Additionally, demographic models predict a 10.000 people over 65 year-olds growth in the district for the next ten years, which equals a 25 % growth compared to the actual population (Gédap UCL and IWEPS, 2012). This massive increase, caused by the postwar baby-boom, also highlights the necessity of a strategic and proactive research. In this context, SEGEFA-ULg was integrated to the project for its expertise in territorial intelligence (Breur et al., 2009; Breuer et al., 2010) as well as the added-value of its potential partnership with ThéMa (UFC) to implement the Catalyse toolkit (Girardot and Masselot, 2006; Girardot and Masselot, 2009) and the GDRI-INTI network. The project was articulated around the collaboration between partners to identify economically viable and socially fair development actions. In a first step, this lecture will discuss the implementation of the project, the collaboration between the partners and how the Catalyse tools were applied. In the second, we will present the main results of the project and the Catalyse method, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the territorial intelligence methodology applied to the topic of aging population.