Luca: Buon sabato a tutti e bentornati al podcast di Magic Towns Italia con Luca e, soprattutto, 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: Esattamente. Abbiamo quindi analizzato i dati dettagliati sulla popolazione di oltre 7.500 comuni italiani.
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: Ci siamo concentrati su tre domande semplici ma molto importanti. Primo: la città sta crescendo o diminuendo? Due: i giovani adulti restano o se ne vanno? E terzo, quanto velocemente la popolazione sta invecchiando.
Anna: e quali sono le intuizioni chiave?
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: Esattamente. Per quanto riguarda la capacità di trattenere i giovani, abbiamo scoperto che circa 50% delle città sono in grado di trattenere o attrarre giovani adulti.
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: Ha senso. I giovani adulti si trasferiscono spesso in città come Milano o 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: Già. Triste ma vero. E l'ultima parte è invecchiare. Invecchiamento. È un fenomeno che riguarda tutto il Paese. Abbiamo visto che praticamente ogni città ha una popolazione che invecchia in media. Anche quelle che attraggono i giovani.
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: Ma so che c'è stato un lato positivo anche nel vostro studio.
Luca: Se si ignora tutto il resto, la dimensione della città è importante. Le città di medie dimensioni sono le vincitrici assolute. Avevano un buon equilibrio. La nostra preparazione, la stabilità, l'attrazione dei giovani, hanno superato il piccolo villaggio.
Anna: Mi piace questa intuizione.
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.
Tendono ad avere, in media, la popolazione più anziana e stanno perdendo giovani. Quindi hanno un futuro piuttosto cupo, se posso dirlo.
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.
A volte una città a pochi chilometri di distanza da un'altra può avere una tendenza completamente diversa. Per questo motivo, è necessario scavare nei dettagli locali.
Luca: Esattamente.
Anna: Quindi, in base allo studio, quali sono le parti d'Italia con più città resilienti e demograficamente sane?
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: Non sorprende che i dati mostrino che diverse regioni meridionali e insulari come la Calabria, la Sardegna, il Molise, la Puglia e la Campania hanno una concentrazione particolarmente elevata di città che stanno perdendo popolazione e giovani.
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, quindi la connettività aiuta. Un altro buon esempio che avete trovato è Salsomaggiore Terme in Emilia Romagna, giusto?
Luca: Questo è un caso interessante, perché in realtà ho guardato a Salsomaggiore quando ho deciso di tornare in Italia.
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.
Ha una buona attrattiva per i ventenni e i quarantenni e, per le persone che sono alla ricerca di occasioni, a volte una città che si trova in difficoltà può riprendersi, soprattutto quando le basi in quel caso, l'architettura, la storia, la vicinanza alle grandi città lo giustificano.
Anna: Immagino che coloro che hanno acquistato immobili in questa zona quando i prezzi erano bassi siano contenti di vedere una ripresa.
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 si trova sulla costa vicino a Roma.
Tra le città più grandi che abbiamo esaminato, questa è una delle più impressionanti perché ha un forte afflusso di studenti e giovani. Naturalmente è a portata di Roma, probabilmente conoscete la zona meglio di me. Con una crescita annuale della popolazione di circa 2,5%, che è enorme per gli standard.
Il tema comune per me è che la resilienza spesso deriva dall'essere ben collegati a un'area economica più ampia, pur offrendo il tipo di alta qualità della vita che la gente cerca nelle città italiane più piccole.
Allo stesso tempo, come abbiamo avuto sorprese in positivo, abbiamo visto molte sorprese in negativo. Le città che si sono distinte per aver fatto particolarmente male sono Camerino, nelle Marche, il che è davvero triste perché Camerino ha un'università non così grande per tutti gli standard, ma sono stato sorpreso di trovarla in questa lista di città in declino. Diverse città in Calabria, come Cutro, Atri, Vietri, in Campania, sono tutti paesi del sud. Si tratta di una combinazione piuttosto negativa di forte calo demografico. Scarsa capacità di trattenere i giovani e aumento della pressione degli anziani. Quindi, le persone invecchiano e i posti si svuotano.
Anna: E per quanto riguarda le grandi città o i piccoli centri? C'è stato qualcuno di loro che ha avuto difficoltà in particolare?
Luca: Sì, i due che spiccano sono Trapani in Sicilia e Crotone e Calabria.
Anna: Yeah, that’s sad to hear because places like Crotone or Trapani hanno così tanta storia e carattere.
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.
Si possono trovare comunità fiorenti ovunque in Italia. Basta sapere cosa cercare e adattarle ai propri desideri e alla realtà della vita.
Speriamo che questo sia stato utile per voi. La prossima settimana torneremo con un tema più leggero e vi auguriamo un buon fine settimana.
Anna: Grazie mille, ragazzi. E sentitevi liberi di contattarci se volete
Luca: necessità di.
Sì, contattateci. Se avete idee per il podcast, ci piacerebbe sentirle. Quindi rimanete in contatto e seguiteci su Instagram, [00:14:00] Facebook, Spotify e sul nostro sito web. Ciao.
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