2.3: Relevant Regional Information

Demography

The territory has a significant ageing population, as some sub-regions have an average rate of 275% against the national average of 111%. Only 27% of the population in the territory is between 0-24 years.

Land use

Land use is highly marked by its morphologic characteristics, due to the existence of mountain and rivers. Last decades have shown two distinct trends in Portugal: on one hand, a progressive concentration of population in main urban centers along the coast and on the other hand, the polarization and demographic growth in the main urban centers in the interior. Together, these centerss concentrate 75% of residence population in portugal. In contrast to these rural areas in portugal tend to suffer from desertification and human migration, consequently resulting in lack of workforce for maintaining industry and public services.

Education

Instruction level is a matter of concern, as 61% of the population has primary school studies and 15% are illiterate. But the scenario is worst: only 5,5% of the population went to high-school and 3,5% to university. Scholar abandonment rate is also high: 21% of the students drop out from school.

Infrastructure

In terms of environmental sustainability, the scenario is the following:

• Water supply capacity system is 97%, surpassing national average that is 92%. But shared solutions between counties only exist in a small part of the territory. In most cases water supply is held by a single municipality and has many origins, making a full control of water quality and liability almost impossible.
• Residual water drainage coverage is about 70% but the treatment capacity is only 60%. As for the waste collection system, it covers almost 99% of the population. However only 2,4% of produced waste is recycled.

In terms of social equipments:
• Educational facilities surpass national average..
• Health services tend to be more alike the national context. But this only happens because the city of Coimbra offers a great amount of those services, in contrast with the interior of this territory.
• Cultural and leisure equipments also surpass the national average.
• The rates of social protection services for children and elder are extremely low.

Mobility

This region lacks good accesses between the different urban and rural centers. One of the main obstacles is in fact, nature; the mountains and the rivers divide the territory, but public authorities have a strategic plan to overcome this handicap in order to allow regional mobility and promote strategic development.

Train network crosses a good part of the territory allowing an alternative transport; but the interior region has lack of services and in some cities there’s only three train services per day.