Increasing returns to city size in the face of an impending decline in the sizes of large cities: Which is the bogus fact?

A summary of recently published statistics show an actual or imminent population decline in the great metropolitan regions of many, if not all, of the major industrialized nations (Japan, France, Great Britain, Sweden, Norway, Italy, the USA). The only exceptions so far found to this emerging trend are Finland and Hungary.

Testing the recession theory as an explanation for the migration turnaround

In this paper the so-called recession theory explanation for the decline of net migration to large metropolitan core areas of industrialized countries is tested with an econometric time-series model. In the explanation it is contended that the migration turnaround represents only a temporary fluctuation in the general trend of urban economic and demographic spatial concentration, caused by the business cycle downturns of the 1970s. Our results show that the migration turnaround cannot be attributed exclusively to these business cycle fluctuations. For many of the countries tested, the business cycle operated simultaneously with other factors suggested as explanations for the turnaround. We conclude that several explanations should be combined to build a theory of the migration turnaround.

Changing western German internal migration systems during the second half of the 1980s

The slow downward trend toward greater spatial deconcentration in West Germany during the time period 1970 to 1984 shifted back toward concentration from 1985 and through 1988. This 'swing back' occurred over only a three-year period. Regional labor-market changes appear to be the only factor able to cause such an abrupt shift to concentration, suggesting the importance of the regional restructuring hypothesis as an explanation. Changing internal migration patterns by two age-groups, 25 - 29 and 30 - 49, were responsible for the shift. A reduction of net in-migration to intermediate-sized regions with favorable structures as well as to small-sized rural regions with unfavorable structures, in the northern and central parts of the country, caused the shift. The concentration trend remained unaltered during 1989, in spite of large transfers of population out of eastern and into western Germany, because these exchanges favored the large-sized, densely populated, structurally weak regions in the Ruhr-Rhine and the Saarland.

MIGRATION TO RURAL NAVARRE: QUESTIONING THE EXPERIENCE OF COUNTERURBANISATION

During the last two decades, many rural localities of Navarre (northern Spain) have experienced an increase of population related to the counterurbanisation phenomenon. This reflects the growing lure that rural localities have as residential environments for urban people, especially those coming from Pamplona, the county town of the region. Nevertheless, beyond this restructuring process, a plurality of profiles of migrants and reasons for moving to the country are found. This paper attempts to analyse this diversity through the analysis of the discourses of rural newcomers as expressed in diverse indepth interviews. Whereas most of the academic literature regarding counterurbanisation studies is based on conceptual categories defined prior to the encounter researcher/migrant, this paper explores the possibility of inverting the approach to the study of the phenomenon by considering the starting point as the lowest common denominator; how one experiences an urban-to-rural migration. Copyright (c) 2007 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.