La population des villes est-elle ségréguée en fonction de l’âge ? Quartiers vieillissants et quartiers rajeunis dans les grandes métropoles espagnoles

• Main Authors: Fernando Gil-Alonso, Jenniffer Thiers-Quintana, Jordi Bayona-i-Carrasco, Isabel Pujadas-Rúbies
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille 2021-01-01
• Series: Espace populations sociétés
• Subjects: urban areas; age structure; segregation; economic crisis; Spain
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/eps/11055

Spanish functional urban areas have grown rapidly demographically over the last decades. However, age differences within them, between inner cities, with an older population, and their suburban peripheries, with a younger one, have increased. Nevertheless, this urban segregation pattern by age shows variations in different large Spanish urban areas. Our initial hypothesis is that age segregation is greater in large urban agglomerations, and less relevant in smaller urban areas, where age groups are spatially more mixed. The objective of this paper –using official population data on January 1, 2016, at the census tract level– is to analyze this ‘Geography of urban aging and rejuvenation’ and verify if the spatial patterns found are common to the five largest Spanish metropolitan areas : Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, and Bilbao. The results show that urban segregation by age does not depend as much on the size of the urban area as on its monocentric nature –percentage of the FUA’s population living in its main city– and above all, on the intensity of suburbanisation.