Half of Europe's towns and villages have fewer residents than 60 years ago

Same in Greece, the countryside and even the islands are dying or declining. Everyone is moving to Athens or nearby big cities. Even most greek islands have become huge only-summer resorts and a large airbnb, most of their villages are almost empty during the winter. There are various reasons but the most important ones are that a big majority of properties has been bought by foreigners as vacation homes and there is no incentive for locals or other greeks to go there and create businesses for noone mid-winter without schools, doctors, etc. Add to that younger generations don't want to stay and work as farmers, bakers, builders despite the fact that in most of these professions are in real need and can make great money there. People prefer the easy money from airbnb and property selling to foreigners.

Not enough software engineers converting to farming? Shocking.

If anything else, for me the main issue in France is the dearth of doctors in rural areas. So even the romantic idea of retiring in quaint village is predicated on not getting sick.

Some countries have really high housing prices and housing scarcity right on a border with another country where this isn't the case. You can get 30-40% differences just by moving a few km on the borders of the Netherlands. The reason this isn't that popular is that by moving like that you get to deal with different jurisdictions and tax systems. Particularly the social systems different countries have are very different. So there's a cost to moving to another country. But it sure is tempting when you realize that what you paid for a small apartment buys you a large house with a garden just 10 km away.

Here in Berlin where I currently live the population grows by a out 50K people a year. There are housing shortages and people are struggling to find a place to live.

However the surrounding Brandenburg area has been depopulating since the wall fell. Lots of little ghost towns there. And it's not even that far. There's plenty of housing available if you can tolerate the inconvenience of a shitty commute.

IMHO the coming revolution of autonomous driving is going to lower the cost and inconvenience of living a bit further away. It enables working or relaxing while you commute. A two hour commute is much less of a problem if you can be a bit productive. And of course you don't have to do that everyday. Lots of people work remotely some or all of the time.

Autonomous driving could also lower the cost of public transport by eliminating the cost of drivers and fossil fuels. Most of the reason of remote villages being underserved by public transport is cost. On demand pickups/dropoffs and more flexible scheduling could further address that. And it's a lot cheaper than commuter rail extensions.

It appears that it is turning into a problem in Italy for another reason. In mountainous regions the streams would be maintained by the people owning the land. With people leaving the area the waterways are left unmaintained leaving debris such as large trunks as branches in the water. This effect is compounded by that the land that remains “actively” owned is divided amongst many descendants that can never agree to either fix something or pay to get it fixed.

The consequence of all this is that water flows less freely and that when there is a lot of rainfall it comes not just with water but also large amounts of trees and stones.

I imagine this happening in many places.

If you just want the map and not this ever scrolling cinematic experience

https://cdn.correctiv.org/deployed-apps/CE_2026_population_m...

Something strange happens when people get wealthy and advanced enough. Cost of living rises, workload increases, it becomes unaffordable to have kids. 30 years later, everything is empty.

Places like Australia have plenty of land but, nah, everyone wants to live urban where housing prices are insane or inherited.

Food costs often go down in developed countries, cheaper than developing ones. Maybe they're so low that they can't afford to become farmers anymore? Not enough people buy corn and corn price is so cheap that it gets made into HFCS. But if you can't mass produce cheap corn, you're screwed and get a desk job.

So we have the service economy. Everyone sells services to one another, works from home, makes tons of money. Madrid has top-tier designers, chefs, doctors, moneylenders, nearly every kind of service. All the piles of money in a concentrated place like Madrid makes the whole place overpriced. If you happen to be the best tuna butcher in Western Europe, there's a limited number of places you can work, but many of these specialist jobs are also wfh.

Is there a hack to this though? Can our top tier Spanish pixel artist sell her services to someone in suburban Canada?

People move to where they can make a living. Globalization has largely killed farming as a viable livelihood (in most of the EU at least), it's simply not profitable enough unless you have a massive amount of land/cattle or have invested heavily in automation (usually both). Without that important sector, it's doubtful the trend will reverse unless cities become literally unlivable or there's some kind of miracle in transport technology.

There are definitely some data missing, because in Czechia where I live there are some areas on the map with 100% decline in population like Libavá and Březina, which definitely have some population. I don't know about any village that would be totally de-populated. https://obyvateleceska.cz/olomouc/libava/503941

It is my hope that increased connectivity and options to study, work, and interact with other people from anywhere will partially revert this trend, but honestly, it seems inevitable.

Part of my family hails from a small Mountain Village which used to be quite alive thirty years ago, but now the majority of the population is above 60, and there's only a handful of children. Small towns have many positive sides, but network effects are too important for people.

The area on the map that is green corresponds to the blue banana: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Banana

1. The phenomenon exists, but what is the problem?

2. Surely "municipality" does not mean the same thing in different countries.

Lay fiber, strenghten 5G coverage, allow work from home. Problem solved.

Odd, why has Hamburg and Berlin stayed the same population in the last 30 years?

Yet still a lot of houses is expensive as h...rent/buy - doesn't really matter.

How about the other half?

Anthropologists announce that human populations tend to congregate towards urbanity. Next sports.

What is the actual problem with this development?

Good time to go? Better and more affordable life?

Meanwhile The Netherlands is bright green due to its suburbanization policies of the 1970s. Let’s spread people out instead of building out our cities…

half have fewer... and.. half have more?

Europe has been ruined, since USA interfered militarily in Europe.

Since 1900, major U.S. military interventions in Europe have included full-scale combat operations during World War I (1917–1918) and World War II (1941–1945), as well as targeted Allied troop deployments in Archangel and Siberia during the Russian Civil War (1918–1920). Throughout the Cold War, U.S. forces executed non-combat and advisory operations, such as supplying West Berlin during the Berlin Airlift (1948–1949) and providing direct military aid during the Greek Civil War (1947–1949). In the post-Cold War era, the U.S. engaged in several NATO-led Balkan campaigns, including airstrikes and peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995), a 78-day air campaign and ground deployment in Yugoslavia and Kosovo (1999), and a brief disarmament operation in North Macedonia (2001).