Population Winners and Losers

Some smart guys here in Germany (the Institute of German Economy)....sat down and analyzed growth data for urban areas around the nation.  They came to this interesting trend.  In roughly twenty years.....the top six or seven areas of Germany will expand out even further in population, while they predicted several areas are marked for population decline.

The areas of population growth?  Hamburg (another ten percent growth predicted), Berlin, Dusseldorf-Bonn, Frankfurt (of course), Munich (the king with twenty-five percent growth anticipated), and Stuttgart.

The areas geared toward loss?  Saxony, Mecklenburg, Thuringia (a hefty 13-percent loss), and the Saarland area (figure roughly ten percent of their population will disappear).

What's this generally mean?  If you lived in Saxony or Saarland....it means it'll be awful hard to convince any state guys to finance new roads or infrastructure.  The statistics tend to indicate that you've got issues and won't be at the same population level in just twenty years.

The boom cities?  I'd suspect that the six cities are quietly reviewing the data and preparing a list of road and bridge projects.

Germany has an interesting method of money distribution for cities.  If your population reaches a certain point, you get into a higher grade of distribution.  Making the 100,000 resident point....is a big deal.   Going from 105,000 in one decade.....to 98,000 in the next decade.....is a big negative, with less capital funding and special project cash.  Cities are always working up gimmicks....like counting in four extra neighborhoods with two thousand residents each....into the city management system.

What should the typical German take away from this?  If you were looking for construction type jobs over the next decade....it's easy to guess where you ought to be living.  If you were looking for cheap housing as you retire.....the Saarland might be fairly cheap in the next decade or two.

For the folks around Munich....if you were growing up there in the 1960s....and someone suggested that it'd eventually be 3.25 million residents....you'd have laughed and said no way.  By 2030....Munich will be a major urban area.....easy comparable to any of the top twenty cities of Europe.