Malmö is Sweden’s fastest growing metropolis
Malmö is Sweden’s fastest growing metropolis
This year, it has registered a demographic increase that exceeds Stockholm and Gothenburg combined
Last week, the Malmö municipal website reported that the Swedish city not only continues to grow but that it does so at an astonishing rate. For the first time in its history, the population clocked in over 350,000 inhabitants.
Apparently, the demographic increase this year is greater than Stockholm and Gothenburg combined. This currently makes it the fastest growing metropolis in the Scandinavian country.
What are the reasons behind it?
Experts have suggested that there is a combination of factors that explain the ongoing population growth despite pandemic conditions. It mainly has to do with three such factors: more newborns, lower mortality and a record internal migration. All of these testify that the city has become increasingly attractive for living and that it offers an improved quality of life.
”The number of newborns has so far been high this year. In 2020, almost 4,900 children were born, and that number is expected to rise in 2021 and be among the highest we have seen in the last 50 years. At the same time, relatively few Malmö residents die, and even though mortality increased in 2020 and a bit into 2021, the number of deaths has now begun to return to the low level we saw in the years before the pandemic., Explained Karl McShane, social strategist at the city of Malmö.
Immigration also affects population growth. During the pandemic, there was a sharp reduction in the number of immigrants in Malmö when the COVID restrictions were introduced and several countries closed their borders.
Immigration is also expected to be at a lower level in the future, partly due to new legislation that makes it more difficult to obtain a permanent residence permit in Sweden. With regard to emigration, there has been no major change in the number of people leaving Malmö.
However, emigration is not only a phenomenon that occurs across national borders, it also happens between municipalities in the same country. It turns out that Malmö had not seen this type of people from other municipalities since the 1960s!
Most of these people came from the smaller towns in Sweden’s southernmost region Skåne, which is also home to Malmö. It also means that even if the pandemic could have given urbanization a break, it did not stem at all.