Long-run suburbanization trends in Portugal

Abstract

Using census data from 1960 to 2021, this graphic reveals how suburban municipalities evolved from representing less than 19% of the population in mainland Portugal to almost 39%. In particular, suburban municipalities constitute the only group of municipalities for which doubling population size occurred more often than not. At the same time, Lisbon and Porto, the central cities of the two metropolitan areas, lost 32% and 24%, respectively, of their population. The paper concludes by briefly enumerating the causes of suburbanization in Portugal that have been more discussed in the literature.

Keywords

• suburbanization
• metropolitan areas
• urban structure
• population growth
• Lisbon
• Porto