Currently, 40% of the population in Europe lives in a shrinking region, which means they experience a declining and/or ageing population. This especially impacts rural regions, where natural decline, continued urbanisation, and accompanying centralisation are expected to accelerate shrinking in these regional areas. Policy challenges are evident in, for example, labour market shortages, fiscal sustainability, infrastructure provision and access to services. Local planning is crucial to meet these changes and identify new and innovative strategies and solutions. But so far, much local planning has been reluctant to actively and adequately deal with these challenges, and there is a lack of approaches and models for dealing with demographic changes in a way that is both innovative and realistic at the same time.

RURALPLAN developed, piloted and evaluated a model for planning labelled as a Rural Planning and Innovation Lab (RUPIL). This model has been tested in practice during 2024 in three local communities in Europe: the Albula region in Switzerland, the Malung-Sälen Municipality in Sweden and Os Municipality in Norway. All are characterised by the experience of shrinking in different ways.