Fading Landscapes: Mapping Rural Depopulation in Greece (1928–2021)
A GIS-ready, georeferenced population dataset built from digitised Greek census records spanning 1928 to 2021, for multi-scalar analysis of long-term rural population change.
Rural depopulation in Greece has unfolded unevenly across space and time, producing differentiated settlement trajectories shaped by accessibility, historical contingencies, and shifting administrative frameworks. Understanding these dynamics requires data that are both spatially explicit and temporally continuous — able to support systematic comparison across scales and periods without privileging a single unit of analysis.
A consistent spatial framework
The dataset integrates settlement-level population records within a unified spatial framework and links them to successive administrative geographies, so that change can be analysed consistently despite decades of boundary revisions. It supports flexible aggregation and disaggregation, allowing movement between regional overviews and finely resolved local analysis, and the construction of custom study areas based on geographic characteristics.
What the maps reveal
Analysis of the Peloponnese surfaces distinct socio-spatial patterns of demographic change:
- Asynchronous population peaks across settlements, rather than a single shared turning point
- Spatially uneven rates of decline, associated with remoteness, connectivity, and differential access to economic opportunity
- Divergent post-decline trajectories, ranging from persistent contraction to partial stabilisation
These patterns reflect broader processes — post-war urbanisation, mid-twentieth-century emigration, and the reorganisation of administrative structures — but also reveal significant local variation that resists uniform interpretation.
Rather than advancing a single explanatory narrative, the project delivers a reusable research infrastructure for comparative, multi-scalar analysis of long-term population change.
- StatusIn progress
- Focus areaRural Revitalization
- CoveragePeloponnese, extending to the national scale
- Period1928–2021 census records
- LeadGeorge Papadakis
- OutputGeoreferenced dataset and thematic maps; initial results presented at the Hellenic Geographic Society Conference, November 2026