An Incredibly Detailed Map of Europe's Population Shifts • Hacker News Board

Re: An Incredibly Detailed Map of Europe's Population Shifts

#61

Post by userulluipeste » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 1:51 PM UTC

locacorten wrote: post #27

notNow wrote: post #17

Anyone have any idea why in the countries most hit by the recession (Spain, Italy and Greece to name a few) there's striking divergence between population growth specifically decreasing Greece on one hand while increasing in Italy and Spain in general despite the three of them share the same dynamics at play and especially Greece and Spain?

Eastern Europeans are much more likely to migrate to Italy and Spain than to Greece. Romanians especially. One reason is that Romanian is closer to Italian and Spanish than to Greek.

It's true that the language plays a role in deciding where one prefers to go, but there are also the somewhat more prosaic considerations like the economical ones. The state of Greek economy is nothing like that of Italy or Spain. I have a romanian relative that left Greece after seven years (time in which she learned Greek, accommodated herself and everything) and settled for Italy recently. The hardships exist and this move wasn't easy (from an economical point of view, compared to her previous pre-recession Greece settling experience), but with all that it seems that it still does worth it.

Re: An Incredibly Detailed Map of Europe's Population Shifts

#62

Post by paddyoloughlin » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 6:11 PM UTC

WildUtah wrote: post #40

lagadu wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Ireland has less than a fifth of the population density the Netherlands has. They don't particularly strike me as a "jam packed horror".

You're talking about a country so insanely crowded that they actually manufacture land out of the sea just to squeeze themselves in. In fact, they're famous for it because it's so awful and crazy. There's significant danger that rising oceans and a major storm could kill millions. That sounds like horror to just about everyone. And Netherlands has adjacent countries not so dense as itself with forests and open space…

WildUtah, I have no idea where you are getting your information, but I am Irish, I have lived in Ireland my whole life. I'm in Ireland, looking out at Ireland as I write this message.

Your assessment is extraordinarily inaccurate.

"insanely crowded"?

Then why is the majority clamouring for more homes to be built? Property prices are climbing, not because things are too crowded, but because there aren't enough houses.[1][2]. Surely if it were "insanely crowded" here there'd be more of a popular pushback saying "where are we going to put these new houses?". Let me tell you: it doesn't exist.

The Irish government is going to great lengths to encourage new house building to meet the demand.

Ireland is famous for for manufacturing land out of the sea? Really? Well you're going to have inform this Irishman what you are referring to. The only things I can think of is the creation of Bull Island -- which was an unintended side-effect of the building of the Bull Wall, a successful project to dredge Dublin Bay undertaken in the early 18th Century [3] -- and various land reclamation projects around Dublin Port over the past 300 years, which a quick google search will inform you were more to do with planning permission than overcrowding.

For a country which is "insanely crowded", someone forgot to tell the population that. Add to this the population density facts which other commenters have provided, which you disregard and I can tell you that your information sources are lying to you.

[1] http://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/review-of-the-yea...

[2] http://www.irishexaminer.com/business/features/shortage-of-h...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Wall

Re: An Incredibly Detailed Map of Europe's Population Shifts

#63

Post by paddyoloughlin » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 6:22 PM UTC

WildUtah wrote: post #56

eropple wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just spent a fantastic vacation in Ireland, traveling between Dublin, Cork, and Galway by car--which meant a lot of narrow but very well-kept roads between many tiny towns. The idea that double, even triple, the population of Ireland would somehow not have "forests and open space to adjourn to" is...well...it's interesting. Wait, did I say interesting? I meant "horse manure". That is an empty country, with plenty o…

Oh, it's so nice you've seen the country from a car. A manufactured experience professionally landscaped by traffic engineers observed from within a machine those engineers are employed to promote taught you all you need to know about a country. Ireland is almost empty of wilderness and has scant backcountry. Even the mountain ranges have a very few trails backed by industrial tree farms. Most of the supposed forest…

Only one thing in this entire post is not wildly inaccurate: there is a lot of rural to urban migration amongst young people in Ireland, but this is something which happens in every country in the world.

If it is any stronger in Ireland, it has much more to do with how bad the infrastructure is in Ireland and how Dublin-centric most investment is.

"A manufactured experience professionally landscaped by traffic engineers"? You give our government more credit than it deserves.