Quote:
Originally Posted by nito
The area doesn’t exactly match, but going by your figures and Brisavoine, New York has experienced population loss of some 350,000?
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No, New York expanded a lot between 2010 and 2020 (it is in the 2000s that it stagnated). I'll post the updated figures shortly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nito
I’m also surprised that London’s population is expanding (numerical and percentage terms) so much faster than Paris. Is French population growth mostly outside of Paris?
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Yes, French growth is the exact opposite of British growth: in the UK, growth is concentrated in London, and the rest of the country either declines, stagnates, or grows only moderately. This was France's situation from 1850 to 1950 pretty much: 'Paris and the French desert' as a famous demographer complained in a seminal 1947 essay.
Since then, the French authorities have done all they could to contain Paris, and they have succeeded. Here again, we are the polar opposite of the UK. When Paris grew a lot and the rest of France stagnated (i.e. before 1950), the French authorities felt largely unconcerned, whereas in the UK the British authorities were doing their best to contain London (hence the Green Belt, and other strategies, new towns, etc).
The French authorities changed tack in the 1960s and decided to contain Paris and develop the rest of the country (selection of a few "equilibrium metropolises", large university campuses, industrial relocations, etc), and they have never reversed course. In the UK, there was a complete reversal in the 1990s 'Tony Blair years', when they decided to push and promote London in every possible way (based on this odd idea that only big metropolises can thrive in this modern global world) and abandon the rest of the country to its own poor fate.
So as a result, London renewed with high growth rates after the year 2000 (higher than 0.75% per year), while Paris keeps growing only thanks to its own momentum, and has been around +0.50% per year for the past 35 years.
In the rest of France, some regions are declining or stagnating (industrial north rustbelt, rural interior areas), but the "equilibrium metropolises" are booming, and the Atlantic coastal areas in general are also booming.
Between the 2012 and 2023 censuses (it's an 11-year period to account for 2020 when the yearly census didn't take place due to Covid), these were the yearly growth rates for the French metro areas:
- Geneva (French part of the metro area): +1.71% per year
- Montpellier: +1.41%
- Bordeaux : +1.36%
- Toulouse: +1.33%
- Nantes: +1.24%
- Rennes: +1.15%
- Lyon: +0.83%
- Strasbourg: +0.62%
- Nice: +0.55%
- Marseille: +0.50%
- Paris: +0.41%
- Lille: +0.37%
- Grenoble : +0.31%
- Rouen: +0.31%
Things may be about to change in the UK. On the one hand, London's growth since 2000 has been fueled by international immigration (native Britons actually flee London; a similar phenomenon takes place in Paris), but the British public has now become largely hostile to immigration, and with the rise of the Reform Party, the government has started to curtail immigration, so that will affect London's growth. And the 2nd factor is the new prime minister Andy Burnham, a man from the north who wants to end the chapter of history opened by Tony Blair, and rebalance the country, in particular by favoring Northern England. We'll see whether the government has really a long-term commitment to contain London and refocus growth on other more northerly areas, or whether it's a just a fling. There are still very powerful forces in the British media and elites who want to favor London and don't give a damn about the rest of the country, so I'm not certain that the rebalancing will really take place, but we'll see. Curtailing immigration will be more likely to hit London's growth than rebalancing the country.
In France, no change ahead expected. Governments will continue to contain Paris and favor the "equilibrium metropolises". And future governments could curtail immigration (if they become really serious about it), which would depress Paris's growth even more.
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