Vienna breaches through 2-million-inhabitants threshold

This made the Austrian capital the fifth-largest city in the European Union

The Vienna State Statistics Service announced at the end of last week that according to preliminary results, the Austrian capital now has a population of 2 million residents. The symbolic threshold was passed last month and marks a return to demographic form for a city, which has been steadily shrinking throughout most of the 20^th century.

To put things into perspective, the last time the city counted that number of inhabitants was in 1913, on the eve of World War I! Back then, Vienna was the capital of an entire empire – the Austro-Hungarian state, which covered most of Central Europe. Following the dissolution of that polity, the status of the city rapidly shrank from its glorious days, together with its population.

Much like other European cities, it experienced demographic ageing. So much so that in the 1970s, it was considered one of the demographically oldest cities in the world.

What’s the recipe behind the turnaround?

Now, Vienna has reached a size it hadn’t known for more than a century and even ranks as the fifth-largest city in the EU after Berlin, Madrid, Rome and Paris.

In 1988, Vienna recorded its lowest population level in the 20th century with just 1.48 million residents. But then history, geopolitics and global shifts happened.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and during the Yugoslav Wars many immigrants and refugees from Eastern Europe flocked to the city and that trend has not abated since then. In more recent years, it was immigrants from Germany and Eastern Europe and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan have boosted the demographic ranks of the Austrian capital.

Vienna has continued to grow rapidly since the beginning of the 21st century, by an average of almost 20,000 people per year. As a result, the city's population has increased by a good 400,000 Viennese since 2000.

What’s more, these people have also improved the demographic profile of Vienna, bringing its average age down. With around 39% of the population born abroad, Vienna is now also one of the most diverse cities in the EU alongside Brussels. 

The proportion has risen steadily over the past two decades due to continued gains in immigration from abroad. Today, Serbia, Turkey and Germany are the most common countries of birth for Viennese people who were not born in Austria.