While the overall trend is unchanged – people continue to move from the countryside to the cities – recent years have also seen people moving from larger centres to smaller ones. The “hot spots” of population growth are the Baltic Sea coast and the Vidzeme highlands, Māris Bērziņš, associate professor at the Faculty of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University of Latvia, told Latvian Radio on December 26.
Internal migration, or the movement of people within a country, has a significant impact on the distribution and settlement of the population in Latvia, Bērziņš said, explaining that in recent years migration has been strongly affected by both the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical events.
“Of course, the general trend is that people from the regions are moving closer to Riga, but some are also moving to the countryside. In recent years, we have experienced several shocks related to different crises, and it is interesting that in these times of crises, people move down the so-called settlement hierarchy – from larger population centers to smaller ones,” Bērziņš said.
In 2021 and 2022, many small towns in Latvia even showed a small, but still significant increase in population due to internal migration, Bērziņš pointed out.
Hot spots where the number of people is growing are particularly visible in the Vidzeme highlands and the Baltic Sea coast – these are places where people have always wanted to live, Bērziņš said. “Cold spots” on the Latvian map are small villages with already small populations.
“Looking at the different levels of the settlement hierarchy, rural settlements – villages with fewer than 500 and fewer than 100 people – are the ones that are shrinking the fastest in all regions,” Bērziņš said.
At the same time, Ženija Krūzmētra, associate professor at the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities at the Latvian University of Biosciences and Technology, pointed out that there are several sparsely populated places, for example, on the Lithuanian border, that people are not only leaving but also returning to.
“There are enough returnee families who either go back to where they lived before or choose new places. There are mixed marriages, where people return to Latvia and successfully implement various business ideas. In small settlements, in small villages of perhaps 50 to 150 inhabitants, every newcomer and family is valued, because it is a huge benefit. So these people are integrated into the communities,” said Krūzmētra.
“The importance and value of the countryside as a safe living environment is growing. At the same time, there is a selective choice of locations. There are places where people gravitate towards and also places where people are more likely to move away from. So there are two parallel processes going on: in one place the population is shrinking, in another there are a lot of newcomers,” said Krūzmētra.
She also confirmed that people tend to live mostly around the Baltic Sea coast or in the Vidzeme highlands, but pointed out that there is also an undeniable increase in suburban areas.
Miķelis Grīviņš, a tenured professor at Riga Stradiņš University, argued that although there are places in the Latvian countryside that people aspire to, the trend is mostly negative.
“In general, the countryside is emptying and there are more places where people have problems. Those who are moving out of the city to live in greener areas are people who can afford it and have some extra resources they can use to move around and maintain their quality of life,” Grīviņš pointed out.
He pointed out that one of the main problems or challenges in rural areas is that it is more difficult to provide social services. The further one lives from a population center, the more resources one needs to invest to provide social services for oneself.
“Accordingly, not everyone can pull it off and, to some extent, living in the countryside has become a kind of extra that you have to pay for. This, of course, creates the threat in the background that the places that urban people choose to move to are becoming more expensive. We hear about this in both Cēsis and Kuldīga. These are extreme examples, of course, but in general, it is the case that places that attract people also have consequences,” Grīviņš said.
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