The return of the population to the Spanish metropolitan centers. A demographic and territorial vision of redevelopment processes

Abstract

After two decades of an intense population decrease, the central cities of Barcelona and Madrid have experienced a remarkable increase of population during the last decade. Most of the largest Spanish cities have undergone trends in the same direction, but less intense. Thus, Spanish largest metropolitan areas have come to share the reurbanization processes that many other cities in Europe and in the United States experienced during the last two decades of the 20th century.
In the Spanish case, the arrival and settlement of foreign population in the urban centers have played a major role in this comeback. The total gains of population in these areas should not hide, though, the negative balance that central cities still have in the residential relation with their own metropolitan areas. However, it has been stated that central areas have become more attractive for metropolitan residents. This papers aims at analyzing the back to the city movements in the largest Spanish metropolitan areas, mainly from
a geo-demographic perspective. The research analyzes the territorial areas of residential relation of the city center, its temporal evolution, and the demographic structure of the individuals participating in these residential flows.