Tamilwai J. Kolowa

All figures from: Kolowa, T. J., Weigand, M., Standfuß, I., Klüsener, S., Lomax, N., & Taubenböck, H. (2025). Is Germany experiencing urban or suburban growth? Contrasting long-standing and novel urban gradient classifications. Applied Geography, 185, 103779. doi.org/10.1016/j.ap...

Takeaway: How we define space shapes the story we tell about urban growth — and that matters for planning and policy.

#Urban #Cities #Planning #Population

🔍 Key insight #3:

In Germany’s largest cities (Berlin, Munich, Hamburg), urban + suburban growth strong and looked similar — they didn’t vary much with definition.

But in smaller and medium-sized cities, urban growth was usually stronger, and definitions mattered more.

urban growth maps

🔍 Key insight #2:

At the regional scale, the story changes depending on how “urban” vs. “suburban” is defined.

🔍 Key insight #1:

Across Germany, cities grew faster than suburbs — regardless of how you measure the “urban–rural gradient.”

3 urban gradient classifications

Together with colleagues from BiB, DLR, and the University of Leeds, we analyzed how populations shifted between cities, suburbs, and surrounding areas in Germany from 2011–2022.

We compared 3 urban gradient definitions, one of them purely based on built-up density:

paper head

📢 Is Germany experiencing urban or suburban growth?

New paper out now: Contrasting long-standing and novel urban gradient classifications

✨ First article from my thesis, published Open Access in Applied Geography!

👉 doi.org/10.1016/j.ap...

Grateful to present at the Royal Geographical Society Annual Conf. in Birmingham 👑

Felt at home w/ my urban-rural work thanks to great sessions on urban regions, mobility & COVID urban exodus 🥸

Thanks @qmrg-rgs-ibg.bsky.social, PopRG, @rgsibg.bsky.social for putting this together 🙏 #RGS-IBG2025

POV: you go to your local mall and run into a urban digital twin presentation!
The #Wiesbaden digital twin supposed to help in participatory planning processes. Curious to hear more. Check it out:
wiesbaden.virtualcitymap.de#/

Presenter with slide

‚How close is close?‘ Joe Shingleton using LLM to compare AirBnB claims of proximity /w actual distances. See how many listings say ‘close to Buckingham Palace’ all over the place 😁 #AGILE2025

Me with Poster

Keen about urban growth analysis? Meet me at the 4pm poster session at #AGILE2025 in beautiful Dresden! #spatialanalysis #GIS

There are less than 2 weeks left to register for our course "Theories, Data, and Visualization for Global Analyses of Family Change"! Join us this June in beautiful Barcelona to learn more about family systems and change with a focus on comparative analyses: ced.cat/bcn4seasons/...

Just got an email from the Fulbright Association. As of right now, funding has been cut off to 12,500 US citizens currently abroad and and more than 7,400 foreigner scholars and students in the United States

Group photo of phd students

When winter feels the longest, we fortunately organize our own PhD-peer workshop at BiB! The ‘wall of compliments’ – where only pep talk is allowed – was a good balance to useful and critical feedback to my paper 🙏 Thanks @eliashofmann.bsky.social and everyone else! #phdlife #populationgeography

A call for abstracts for a PGR-led Early Career Session at the RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2025. The session is aimed at early career researchers in quantitative geography, and the deadline for submissions is 28th February.

Excited to welcome submissions for an ECR session at the 2025 @rgsibg.bsky.social Annual Conference, sponsored by @qmrg-rgs-ibg.bsky.social 🌍 We’re keen to hear from #ECRs in #QuantitativeGeography! 📒

If you’re interested/have any questions, DM or email me/@fangyuanli.bsky.social

Deadline 28th Feb

Wiesbaden you can do it, too!

Sky Follower Bridge Bridge your Twitter/X followers to Bluesky. Detected Users: 68

I've discovered 68 Bluesky users from my social network using the Sky Follower Bridge.✨

Check it out: share.sky-follower-bridge.dev?q=68

#skyfollowerbridge

Yes, suburban areas have gained population, but for the average city, urban areas have considerably gained more in Germany recently! I was fortunate to present current work, comparing building-based to other urban-rural classifications at #PAA2024 in Columbus ➡️ tinyurl.com/suburbangrid

🚨New Article Alert! 🚨Excited that I published my first paper, emphasizing that informal settlements and sprawl are not the same for #secondarycities in Africa @SustainableCit8. Together with @Michiel_Daams and @MonikaKuffer.
➡️OPEN ACCESS doi.org/10.1016/j.sc...

Hi! Finally migrated 🥳