Luca: God lørdag, alle sammen, og velkommen tilbage til Magic Towns Italy-podcasten med Luca, og vigtigst af alt, Anna.
Anna: Yes, ciao a tutti. Hi everyone. Today we’re diving into some fascinating new findings from a demographic study, Magic Towns Italy conducted using data from 2019 to 2025.
We’ll talk about which towns are growing or shrinking, how well they keep young people, and how much pressure they are under from aging populations. So if you’re a retiree or an expat thinking of relocating here, this is definitely for you.
Luca: Præcis. Så vi analyserede detaljerede befolkningsdata for over 7.500 italienske byer.
And, uh, before you tune onto another [00:01:00] podcast, because you’re not a huge data fan, what we’re gonna be sharing with you are the implications of the study. Consider this for instance, that the idyllic village that you’re looking at could within 10 years turn into a place that doesn’t have a pharmacy, doesn’t have a doctor, or doesn’t have a supermarket.
This happens in Italy, so it’s worth looking out for this. Demographics make a huge difference as to whether a town thrives or fades. So if you’re looking for a place to live in Italy for the long run, you will want to look at the signs.
Anna: Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to move into a beautiful town, only to find out 10 years later that it’s become a ghost village. Let’s start with the big picture. What did the study look at?
Luca: Vi fokuserede på tre enkle, men meget vigtige spørgsmål. Nummer et: Vokser eller skrumper byen? To: Bliver de unge voksne boende eller flytter de? Og tre: Hvor hurtigt bliver [00:02:00] befolkningen ældre?.
Anna: og hvad er de vigtigste indsigter?
Luca: Let’s start with a sad fact, which is the most Italian towns are shrinking. In fact, across the towns we looked at the general trend is for a loss of, uh, about half a percentage point of population per year.
And only about a quarter of Italian towns are actually growing in population. That’s one in four. And if you look at it the other way around, it means that three out of four Italian towns are shrinking. The towns that are growing at disproportionately medium sized towns, imagine towns around 10 to 20,000 inhabitants, which are service centers or commuter towns rather than, uh, huge cities or tiny villages.
Anna: Oh, so three quarters are getting smaller. That is huge. So the typical little village we all imagine, chances are it’s quietly empty out. And the ones that are growing tend to be market towns or places within reach of cities, not the remote hilltop [00:03:00] hamlets.
Luca: Præcis. Når vi nu taler om fastholdelse af unge, evnen til at fastholde unge mennesker, fandt vi ud af, at omkring 50% af byerne er i stand til at fastholde eller tiltrække unge voksne.
Unfortunately, the other half are losing the 20 somethings and the 30 somethings. And not surprisingly, larger towns and cities have an edge here, meaning that, uh, they’re more likely to attract young people for university or jobs.
Anna: Det giver god mening. Unge voksne flytter ofte til byer som Milano eller Bologna for work or study, but yeah, it’s interesting that only half hang on to their youth.
If a place lose its young people, it’s basically losing its future, isn’t it?
Luca: Ja, det er det. Trist, men sandt. Og den sidste del med at blive ældre. At blive ældre. Det er et landsdækkende fænomen. Vi så, at stort set alle byer har en aldrende befolkning, der i gennemsnit bliver ældre. Selv dem, der tiltrækker nogle unge [00:04:00] mennesker.
And of course, and we’ve discussed this in several podcasts, the low birth rates across Italy mean that the overall population is aging.
Anna: Men jeg ved, at der også var nogle lyspunkter i dit studie.
Luca: Hvis man ser bort fra alt andet, betyder bystørrelsen noget. Mellemstore byer er de stille vindere i dette. De havde en god balance. Vores forberedelse, stabilitet, tiltrækning af unge, de klarede sig bedre end den lille landsby.
Anna: Jeg elsker den indsigt.
It means those mid-size community often hit a sweet spot, big enough to have services and live, but. Not so big that they lose their charm. So that’s exactly the kind of place many of our listeners dream about. A town with the hospitals, schools, cafes, local markets, but with all the crazy traffic or costs of a major city.
Luca: Yeah, that’s what we see in our data. And conversely, the smallest villages, uh, the kind quaint postcard ones, uh, a lot of those 7% town that we always talk about, are the ones that [00:05:00] are struggling the most, they tend to have the steepest decline in population.
De har en tendens til at have den ældste befolkning i gennemsnit, og de mister unge mennesker. Så de har en ret dyster fremtid, hvis jeg må sige det.
Anna: Yeah, it’s not as simple as the north is fine and the south is declining, or, um, old small villages are dying. In fact, your analysis shows that the familiar stereotypes don’t tell the full story.
Nogle gange kan en by, der kun ligger få kilometer fra en anden, have en helt anden tendens. Så vi skal virkelig grave os ned i de lokale detaljer.
Luca: Præcis.
Anna: Så baseret på undersøgelsen, hvilke dele af Italien har flere af disse modstandsdygtige, demografisk sunde byer?
Luca: Geography does matter in spite of what we just said. Now, north versus south, it is a bit north versus south. There’s a clear cluster of resilient towns with a bright future in northern central regions, Emilia Romagna, Trentino, Lombardy, Veneto, [00:06:00] uh, Tuscany. These fit within our Growth plus Youth Inflow pattern.
Anna: That’s encouraging for the north and the center. And what about the more fragile side of the equation?
Luca: Ikke overraskende viser dataene, at flere sydlige regioner og øer som Calabrien, Sardinien, Molise, Puglia og Campania har en særlig stor koncentration af byer, der mister befolkning og unge mennesker.
Anna: That matches what we hear about people from the south moving north or abroad. But I remember you saying that we shouldn’t just write off entire regions.
Luca: That’s exactly right. There are towns in the south that are doing fine. I posted a chart about Calabria that shows that there’s a coastal area that does especially well with growing and attracting people while the rest of the region is basically bleeding the same, um, young people and, uh, getting older. You can’t just look at the region. You [00:07:00] have to look at the individual town.
Anna: No region gets a free pass, nor region is completely hopeless either. Why don’t we talk about some specific town examples.
Luca: Just mention a few success stories and frankly data that surprised us because they’re not many cases famous towns. One example is Monfalcone.
Monfalcone is in the very northeastern part of Italy in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Which really stands out for retaining young people, getting young people, and even had positive population growth. And if you know the area there’s a fair bit of industry
Anna: Is like a big ship building industry. And it’s also not far from cities like Trieste, Udine, så jeg mener, at forbindelsen hjælper. Et andet godt eksempel, du fandt, var Salsomaggiore Terme i Emilia Romagna, ikke sandt?
Luca: Det er en interessant sag, for jeg kiggede faktisk på Salsomaggiore, da jeg besluttede mig for at komme tilbage til Italien.
It was on my short [00:08:00] list. It’s a spa town, a bit like Recoaro of which we spoke about last week, and it was in decline for many, many years. Even though you remember Anna another used to do Miss Italia from, uh, from, uh, Salsomaggiore. I don’t know if they still do. So anyway. It had the declining population plummeting property prices, uh, and recently has turned around with the both working age people and population growth.
Den har en god tiltrækningskraft på folk i 20'erne og 40'erne, og for folk, der er på udkig efter gode tilbud, kan en by, der har været uheldig, nogle gange komme sig, især når det grundlæggende i det tilfælde, arkitektur, historie og nærhed til storbyer, berettiger til det.
Anna: Jeg forestiller mig, at de, der købte ejendom der, da priserne var lave, må være glade for at se en genoplivning.
Luca: The prices are still pretty low, but I won’t go as, uh, far out as to advise people to buy there yet. We have to see how things develop anyway. And, [00:09:00] uh, talking about another example, Anzio Anzio ligger ved kysten nær Rom.
Og blandt de større byer, vi har kigget på, er dette en af de mest imponerende, fordi den både har en stærk tilstrømning af studerende og unge mennesker. Selvfølgelig er den inden for rækkevidde af Roma, Du kender sikkert området bedre, end jeg gør. Med en årlig befolkningstilvækst på omkring 2,5%, hvilket er enormt efter standarderne.
Det fælles tema for mig er, at modstandsdygtighed ofte kommer af at være godt forbundet med et bredere økonomisk område og samtidig tilbyde den høje livskvalitet, som folk leder efter i italienske mindre byer.
På samme tid, øh, ligesom vi har overraskelser på den positive side, så vi en masse overraskelser på den negative side - byer, der skilte sig ud ved at klare sig særligt dårligt, Camerino, Marche, hvilket faktisk er virkelig trist, fordi Camerino har et universitet, der ikke er så stort efter alle standarder om, øh, jeg var overrasket over at finde det på denne liste over [00:10:00] byer i tilbagegang. Flere byer i Calabrien, som Cutro, Atri, Vietri i Campania, de ligger alle i syd. Det er en ret dårlig kombination af stejl befolkningstilbagegang. Dårlig evne til at holde på de unge og et stigende pres fra de ældre. Så folk bliver ældre, og stederne tømmes.
Anna: Og hvad med større eller mindre byer? Var der nogen af dem, der havde det særligt svært?
Luca: Ja, de to, der skiller sig ud, er Trapani på Sicilien og Crotone og Calabrien.
Anna: Yeah, that’s sad to hear because places like Crotone or Trapani har så meget historie og karakter.
I mean, it’s not that they lack charm or beauty, but yeah, the opportunities there are limited,
Luca: That’s right.
Anna: So based on this data, how do you think our listeners can evaluate a town’s prospects themselves?
Luca: So we’ve recommended, if you go to Magic Towns, you read the article we [00:11:00] published yesterday.
We recommend three quick checks that you can do by yourself on the Town Explorer, number one, are the young adults staying, and if people in their twenties and thirties are all leaving, that means that the town is losing its lifeblood. So a good sign is if the town attracts younger residents or at least manages to keep. The second is, uh, is the population stable or shrinking? If the population declines, little by little and over time, as is the case for many thriving cities in the north then that’s manageable. What you don’t want is a steep, ongoing population drop because that will lead to fewer services, closed shops, and a lot of empty houses.
So bad stay away. Three is aging under control. Population will age in Italy. You’ll find very, very few places where the average age is dropping, so that’s not your goal. What you want [00:12:00] to avoid is towns where the town is aging rapidly and the population, the working age population is shrinking at the same time for the same reason, because essential services will start to struggle and, uh, you are going to be on the receiving end of, uh, a less vibrant community.
Anna: Yeah, I mean, you can often sense, uh, towns age balance by observing are there schools and are they full of kids? Do you see, I don’t know, teenagers and young families around, or is it mostly grandmas on the bench?
Luca: How do you go about doing this kind of analysis so you can, of course, find your own population data online, on the Italian statistics portal or Wikipedia. And of course, I’m always gonna say to save time and do a good job, use our own Town Explorer tool. We added two new filters last week that allow you to search for a town’s demographic [00:13:00] trajectory. Read Anna’s post today on Magic Towns and get informed because frankly, the idea of playing around the numbers to find a place to live may not be for everyone. But, uh, when you’re making a long-term life decision, you know, spending five minutes with useful filters may save you from making some terrible, terrible decisions.
Du kan finde blomstrende samfund overalt i Italien. Bare du ved, hvad du skal lede efter, og matcher det med dine egne ønsker og møder livets virkelighed.
Vi håber, det var nyttigt for dig. I næste uge er vi tilbage med et lettere tema, og vi håber, at du får en god weekend.
Anna: Tusind tak skal I have. Og du er velkommen til at kontakte os, hvis du
Luca: har brug for.
Ja, tag kontakt til os. Hvis du har nogle ideer til podcasten, vil vi faktisk meget gerne høre dem. Så hold kontakten og følg os på Instagram, [00:14:00] Facebook, Spotify og på vores hjemmeside. Ciao.
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