Determining the Scale, Pace, Drivers and Future Scenarios of Global Urban Depopulation

Francisco Rowe, University of Liverpool
Niall Newsham, University of California-santa Barbara

Global population growth is declining and predicted to reverse in the next century. Population decline has become prominent within developed nations, and is expected to spread across urban areas. By all accounts, population decline is expected to impose a set of novel challenges across all tiers of governance. Despite the growing body of research surrounding population decline, deficiencies relating to its spatiotemporal occurrence persist, particularly from a cross national perspective. Population decline is said to occur within spatiotemporal containers, occurring within specific areas at certain periods of time. However, these specificities remain largely unknown across the globe. Drawing on a global analysis, this study aims to address this research gap by determining the scale, pace, drivers and future scenarios of population decline employing artificial intelligence. Our study contributes to expanding our understanding the diverse trajectories of urban population decline, key underpinning socio-economic local attributes, and developing likely future scenarios of population change across 9,515 urban areas across the globe.

Keywords: Spatial Demography, Population and Development, Population projections, forecasts, and estimations, Longitudinal studies

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