Is there any sign of an end to the big city boom in Germany, an end to rural exodus? In any case, the corona pandemic has slowed the growth of large cities to date. This is the assessment made by researchers at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) after evaluating population registration data from the 15 largest German cities. The researchers write that less immigration, fewer births and more deaths in the first corona year of 2020 are responsible for this. For 2021, too, the scientists see rather negative omens.
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The scientists looked at the population development in Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich, Leipzig, Dresden, Hanover, Düsseldorf, Essen, Bremen, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Dortmund and Duisburg. At the end of the last decade (2010 to 2020), these cities grew almost without exception, by an average of 0.55 percent between 2017 and 2018. In 2019, growth was 0.36 percent. In 2020, however, the bottom line was an average minus of 0.18 percent. With Leipzig, Hamburg and Munich, only three of the cities could have recorded small or moderate growth.
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Frankfurt and Berlin are stagnating, Stuttgart is losing many inhabitants
The population decline was most pronounced in Stuttgart with a decrease of over one percent of the population (you can find the full report here). Population growth stagnated in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Essen in 2020. In Dortmund, Hanover, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Cologne and Bremen, the researchers registered a weak to moderate decline in the number of inhabitants. The population declined not only in Stuttgart, but also in Duisburg and Nuremberg.
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This development is made up of several factors. For large German cities it is Immigration – from abroad as well as from rural areas – have recently been of great importance. In 2020 there were burglaries. In terms of immigration, all municipalities fell by almost 17 percent, while outflows fell by 9 percent. The ratio of births to deaths was also unfavorable last year: one Decline in the birth rate of 2.5 percent there was an increase in the cities Deaths by almost 5 percent compared to.
“It seems that in the first Corona year 2020, long-term trends in population development in Germany’s 15 largest cities were slowed down or interrupted,” write the UFZ researchers. They expect the population to continue to decline in 2021 as well. It can be assumed that »only low growth rates, stagnation and increased contraction can be observed«.
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