Dejan Rebernik

Abstract

The paper presents the main characteristics to population development and urbaniza-tion processes in Ljubljana and its urban region before and after 1990. Up to the end of the 1970s, fast population growth and urbanization with a concentration of population in Ljubljana and its 'satellite' towns, was a consequence of strong immigration from rural parts of Slovenia and the rest of Yugoslavia. In the 1980s and 1990s, déconcentration of population within the Ljubljana region, along with intense suburbanization and depopulation of inner-city and older residential neighbourhoods, were the main urbanization processes. After 1991, Ljubljana as the capital of independent Slovenia, and the Ljubljana urban region recorded dynamic economic development attracting new migration to the region. However, in the second half of the 1990s, the greatest population growth was recorded in dispersed rural settlements on the periphery of the region. In this way suburbanization passed into exurbanization and counterurbanization. In some parts of the inner-city reurbanization and gentrification occurred.

Keywords: population development, urbanization processes, urbanization phases, Ljubljana, Ljubljana urban region, Slovenia

Dejan Rebernik, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, Department of Geography, Askerèeva 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia.