Status: 07/06/2021 11:30 a.m.
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The corona pandemic is apparently also having an impact on urban development. Researchers at the Helmholtz Center in Leipzig explain that growth in almost all major German cities was slowed down in 2020.
The growth of large cities in Germany has been slowed down by the corona pandemic – this is the assessment made by researchers at the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig. For a study, they evaluated population registration data from the 15 largest German cities.
Less immigration, fewer births and more deaths in the first Corona year 2020 are responsible for this, write the researchers led by Professor Dieter Rink in a discussion paper. For 2021, too, the scientists see rather negative omens.
Only three big cities with some growth
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 2010s, these cities grew almost without exception, on average by around half a percent between 2017 and 2018. In 2019, growth was 0.36 percent. In 2020, on the other hand, there 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. For the big cities, immigration – from abroad as well as from rural areas – has recently been of great importance. In 2020 there were slumps in this regard.
Researchers see perennial trends as interrupted
The number of immigrants in all municipalities fell by almost 17 percent, while outflows fell by nine percent. The ratio of births to deaths was also unfavorable last year: a 2.5 percent decline in the birth rate in the cities contrasted with an increase in deaths of almost five percent. “It looks like long-term trends in population development in Germany’s 15 largest cities were slowed down or interrupted in the first Corona year 2020,” 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 shrinkage can be observed”.
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