Recent Demographic Trends in the Major Italian Urban Agglomerations: The Role of Foreigners

Recent works have highlighted how many of the major urban agglomerations in Italy are undergoing a new phase of demographic growth. This could be called reurbanization phase according to the theory of spatial cycles and the underlying model of urban life cycle. The occurrence of this phenomenon in a decade when the foreign resident population has tripled could be not only a coincidence. The primary aim of the article is to evaluate the contribution of internal and international migration to the population dynamics of eight Italian urban agglomerations (Turin, Milan, Verona, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples and Palermo) during the period 2001–2010. Secondly, the article analyzes the main demographic features of the foreign resident population in those eight urban settings in order to find potential regularities or discontinuities both across and within (core and rings) the selected urban agglomerations. The demographic censuses as well as administrative data from municipal population registers have been used to compute elementary indicators then synthetized by multidimensional data analysis. The results obtained show that in all the urban agglomerations of the Centre-North the population expansion in the last decade is mostly or entirely driven by the foreign component in the centre and periphery alike. On the contrary, growth in the main urban areas located in the Southern region is stagnant despite the contribution (not as relevant anyway) from the foreign population. Regarding the characteristics of foreign population important differential aspects coming out not only across but also within the same urban agglomerations.