Concurring urbanizations? Understanding the simultaneity of sub-and re-urbanization trends with the help of migration figures in Berlin

Abstract

Most classical models of urban development conceptualize suburbanization and reurbanization as opposing processes of in-and out-migration. The article at hand starts from the understanding that this linear interpretation of migration figures falls short of the mark. Drawing on different approaches to op-erationalize reurbanization, case-specific migration-data from Berlin illustrates a population development where decline and revival do not exclusively happen at either the urban core or the city’s fringes, but can be observed throughout the city region. The paper concludes that seemingly contradicting urban dynamics, such as population gains and losses in different parts of a diversified spatial system such as the city region result from the same land and housing market processes which favour and disadvantage different social groups and neighbourhoods, respectively. This observation calls for a dismissal of mono-linear policy approaches in urban governance and planning, so as to address both macro-and micro-scale disparities in a fair manner and to prevent the neglect of the latter.