Recent demographic and territorial transformations in the Madrid and Barcelona metropolitan regions: the centre and periphery dichotomy

Cristina López, Universitat de Barcelona
Isabel Pujadas, Universitat de Barcelona
Jordi Bayona-i-Carrasco, Universitat de Barcelona

In Spain, this last growth period, lasting from the mid 1990’s to 2007, was, from the urban point of view, mainly characterised by high demographic growth and suburbanisation. This urban and demographic growth were mainly due to three parallel processes: 1) The massive arrival of foreign immigrants to urban cores, leading to population figure recovery after some years when urban decline or stagnation dominated; 2) An increasing residential intra-metropolitan mobility, where foreigners progressively incorporate to suburbanisation; and finally 3) Demographic behaviour changes linked to the Second Demographic Transition, which had different demographic and household impacts in urban centres and peripheries. The paper seeks to analyse these processes and their effects over population structures and their composition in Spain, taking the Metropolitan Regions of Barcelona and Madrid, the two greatest Spanish urban areas, as study cases. Though they generally both intensely grew during these last years due to high foreigner increments, their cores and fringe areas became demographically different. Research will include: 1) Metropolitan demographic trend analysis since 1970, when deconcentration started; 2) An assessment of internal migration intensity and patterns, taking both Spanish and foreign population trends into account; 3) The analysis of centre and periphery differential demographic behaviour and finally 4) A comparison of the two metropolitan areas, in order to highlight their similarities and differences.