Will Toulouse become the third largest city in France?
The annual census will take place from January 20 to February 26 in the Pink City. Toulouse, which has passed the milestone of 500,000 inhabitants, has 30,000 fewer inhabitants than Lyon but is catching up with it little by little thanks to its surface area and its larger land reserves. The census will also make it possible to measure the effects of Covid on the population.
Guess who’s coming home? You may have already received an information letter at your home notifying you of an enumerator’s next visit. Your address is one of the 3,500 selected in Toulouse to take part in the annual population census. This will take place from January 20 to February 26 in the Pink City (and until February 19 in municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants designated in Haute-Garonne). The census is conducted and controlled by Insee Occitanie, in cooperation with the municipalities concerned (2,650 enumerators were recruited by the 958 municipalities concerned in our region). the Toulouse operation will cover a sample of 8% of the population of the Ville Rose.
On paper or online
“The census has two purposes, explains Caroline Jamet, counts the official population of the municipalities, which serves as a reference in particular to establish the financial contribution of the State to the municipalities, or for the number of municipal councilors or pharmacies, and to collect information valuable on housing and the population residing there”. A census generally well accepted by those who are the object of it: 96.5% of the people contacted answer the questionnaire of the enumerators, on paper or, more and more, by Internet (more than half of the answers -55%- canal park during the last census).
How is this going to happen? If you live in a single-family house, the enumerator, who has an official card with his photo ID, will drop a questionnaire in your mailbox that you can return, once completed, by mail or online. . If you live in a dwelling in a collective building, the enumerator will visit you physically (in order to avoid any error) and will submit a notice that you can provide in writing or on the internet. It should be noted that even people who are homeless or living, for example, in itinerant accommodation (barges, caravans) will be designated, the first in Toulouse, on January 20 and 21.
Haute Garonne, 1uh department of France for population growth
The legal population of Toulouse (in 2019) is 493,465 inhabitants. But it is estimated that the milestone of half a million Toulouse residents has certainly been exceeded today. INSEE already estimates the population of the Occitanie region in 2022 at more than 6 million (6,053,548) Occitans, including a quarter of Haut-Garonne (1,452,055). In our department, the natural surplus (more births than deaths) and the migratory surplus (more settlements than departures) combine to make it the first in France (with the Gironde) for demographic growth (+ 1.3% per year). Our region, which has become the 4and of France, having largely exceeded Hauts de France (behind Ile-de-France, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Nouvelle-Aquitaine), is gaining 41,600 inhabitants per year, the equivalent of a city like Castres each year.
At this rate, Toulouse, whose population has been growing by 1.2% per year since 2013, and has accumulated by a third in half a century (370,796 Toulouse residents in 1968), will it catch up, or even overtake Lyon? The “capital of Gaul” has 522,969 Lyonnais (legal population in 2019), i.e. 29,504 more inhabitants than the Pink City. “The population of Toulouse has expanded faster than that of Lyon in recent years, comments Caroline Jamet, regional director of Insee Occitanie, thanks to its geographical spread and its larger land reserves”. But, despite all the projections, very clever who could say when Toulouse will become the 3and City of France.