Urban demography

Alongside fast socioeconomic and technological developments, the human population has grown significantly since 1980, from 4.4 to 8 billion in 2022, and its structure or composition has changed, thereby increasing its ecological footprint. The world population got older, better educated, and more than half is concentrated in cities since 2015. This course focuses on the human actors of the resulting change in the built and natural environments. It introduces aspects of population change in cities that are relevant to architects, urban planners, civil and environmental engineers, as well as social scientists.

Students will learn how to identify and draw sociodemographic profiles of urban populations to better serve them. The course puts the people at the heart of the urbanisation process: for how many, where and for whom to build housing and infrastructure and provide public services? Adopting a multiscale spatial perspective, the course offers an overview of theoretical developments and empirical evidence on the demographic dimensions of city growth, the transformation of city hierarchies, the processes of urban concentration, sprawl and re-urbanisation, and urban exclusion (segregation/slums). Various questions will be addressed, such as: Why is the majority of future world population growth expected to be concentrated in low- and middle-income countries' cities, despite low levels of fertility? Will cities in high-income countries be at the forefront of the expected world demographic decline? How do people respond in terms of their demographic behavior to the changes in human and development and the environment in cities, and how does population urbanization in turn shape trajectories of sustainable development? The aim is to introduce students to the quantitative data used to characterize city populations and identify human risks and societal capacities of adaptation with respect to changes in the built and natural environments. Opportunities to explore these data are offered in the form of applied research during lab sessions.

List of content:

Overview of the international trends in urbanisation and population growth in urban areas

Evaluation of theoretical models and the societal determinants of the components of demographic change (mortality, fertility and migration) in cities

Examination of the inequalities in population numbers, trends and socioeconomic composition between and within cities

Discussion of the interactions between population urbanisation, human development and environmental change

Introduction to data sources used to define urban areas and measure changes in population numbers and composition