Calm ocean or stormy sea? Tracing 30 years of demographic spatial development in Germany

Abstract

Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, several demographic trends have shaped the local population development. The complex and constantly changing interplay of the factors described at the national scale accelerate unevenly on the local level as characteristictrends. However, the fine-grained detection of variations in spatial patterns of local population development, and the combined and varying effect of local trends on these spatial patterns for German municipalities has not been traced for a 30-year period since the German reunification. Against this background, this paper seeks to present a synthesis of trends of population development and illuminate how their spatial patterns have shifted over time and in intensity.The paper reveals that the magnitude of international and internal migration, combined with birth rates below the reproduction level and death surpluses, are leading to very different population developments at the municipal level, which are reflected in four trends: small-scale differentiation, urban boom, differentiation of suburban areas, and consolidation of demographic processes. The present article underlines that demographic trends need to be understood as nested processes of far more complex developments including implications for economic development, retirement provision or political attitudes.