Population ageing has been going on for many decades, but population
shrinking is a rather new phenomenon. The population of Germany, as in
many other countries, has passed a plateau and is currently shrinking.
Demographic change is a challenge for infrastructure planning due to the
longevity of infrastructure capital and the need to match supply and
demand in order to ensure cost-efficiency. This book summarises the
findings of the INFRADEM project team, a multidisciplinary research
group that worked together to estimate the effects of demographic change
on infrastructure demand. Economists, engineers and geographers present
studies from top-down and bottom-up perspectives, focusing on Germany
and two selected regions: Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The
contributors employed a broad range of methods, including an
overlapping-generations model for Germany, regional input-output models,
an energy systems model, and a spatial model of the transportation
infrastructure.