© dpa
Berlin's population continues to grow - especially in the immediate years ahead. According to the current Senate report on population forecasts, around 3.963 million people will live in the capital in 2040.
This prognosis was announced by Berlin's mayor and culture senator Klaus Lederer on Tuesday after the Senate had discussed the issue. For the current year alone, the number of residents is expected to increase by around 65,000 - in particular due to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and the associated immigration of people seeking protection to Berlin.
According to the report presented by the Senate Department for Urban Development, the number of residents will grow continuously in the years up to 2040. For 2025, the forecast assumes that there will be around 3.871 million people living in Berlin, about 96,000 more than in 2021. In 2030, the population will then rise to 3.909 million, an increase of around 134,000 people compared to the starting year.
Around half of the predicted increase would thus occur in the first four years of the forecast. Berlin must therefore prepare itself for rapid population growth - with a corresponding need not only for significantly more housing. According to the data, there will be a total increase of around 187,000 people in 2040 compared with 2021, which would be an increase of around 5 percent.
Lederer pointed out that the age structure of Berlin's population would change as well. According to the forecast, the number of children and young people under 18 will increase by 39,000 (6.3 percent) by 2040, but the number of older people aged 65 and over will rise even more sharply by 80,000 (11 percent). The number of very old people aged 80 and over is expected to increase by 8,000 (3.5 percent). The bottom line is that the average age of Berliners will increase slightly by 2040 - from 42.9 to 43.2 years.
More inhabitants also mean more problems for the Senate. According to Berlin's Senator for Urban Development Andreas Geisel, the significant increase in population over the next four years underscores the challenges facing Berlin. He added that the pressure on the housing market will not ease. "New housing must continue to be built urgently to ease the market, but also daycare centers and schools." Geisel pointed out that it was necessary to ensure that public transportation and individual transport could also keep pace with the population increase.
The topic of housing construction was a central concern at the start of the red-green-red government coalition and not least of governing mayor Franziska Giffey (SPD). Whether one of the core goals of increasing the number of newly built apartments in Berlin to an average of 20,000 per year and thus slowing the rise in rents can be achieved is increasingly in doubt. Rising construction costs, a shortage of skilled workers in the construction industry and, in some cases, supply bottlenecks for building materials are making the Senate's plans for new construction much more difficult. The population forecast clearly shows that the demand is there.