- German population is moving away from the big city
All eight urban districts in Baden-Württemberg have primarily lost German citizens to their surrounding districts. The Statistical Office in Fellbach cites housing scarcity and the resulting high housing costs in the centers as the main reason for this.
The loss of population to the surrounding areas was particularly strong in Karlsruhe, Ulm, and Freiburg im Breisgau. In Ulm, about 80% of the total migration deficit was due to outmigration to the surrounding districts (Alb-Donau district and the Bavarian district of Neu-Ulm); in Karlsruhe, it was nearly 90% (districts of Karlsruhe and Germersheim in Rhineland-Palatinate).
The "city-surround migration" was even stronger in Freiburg im Breisgau: The university town in the Breisgau region lost about 850 German citizens to the Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district and about 300 to the Emmendingen district in 2023. However, fewer than 100 Germans left the university town, indicating that the city was able to compensate for its losses to the surrounding areas through regional in-migration, particularly of young adults.
In total, about 83,600 people moved to Baden-Württemberg in 2023, which was significantly fewer than the record year of 2022 (+178,200) but more than the years 2016 to 2021 (+13,500 to +76,100). However, the migration balance was only positive for the foreign population (+104,100), while about 20,500 German citizens left the southwest, according to the Statistical Office.
The number of people with foreign citizenship in Baden-Württemberg rose to nearly 2.1 million by the end of last year, according to the statisticians. At the end of 2022, there were still 2.01 million foreign citizens in the southwest, and their share of the total population increased from 17.8% to 18.5%.
Among the nearly 2.1 million foreigners registered in the southwest at the end of last year, about 369,800 were asylum seekers, with around 124,720 coming from Ukraine. There are significant regional differences, with the authority in Fellbach near Stuttgart showing a pronounced urban-rural difference. The experts explain this with the fact that foreign citizens live disproportionately often near the job centers, i.e., in larger cities, and that this trend is reinforced by the fact that "where many people of a certain nationality already live, others often join them."
The high housing costs and scarcity in urban centers, such as Karlsruhe and Ulm, are leading causes for German citizens to seek housing opportunities in neighboring districts. The loss of Germans in Freiburg im Breisgau was mainly due to housing-related reasons, with over 1150 individuals migrating to the nearby Breisgau-Hochschwarzwald district and Emmendingen district.
