Francisco Rowe

University of Liverpool | UoL · Department of Geography and Planning

Policy Insights. Population Europe

Population forecasts at the intraurban level are crucial for governments and businesses to implement spatial planning and identify potential markets. However, population forecasts are often produced at coarse scales, namely national and regional, and state of the art small area forecasting methods are scarce and adjusted to work on Global North cou...

Social capital has traditionally been viewed as a fundamental driver of democratic vitality. However, since the late-20th century, it has been suggested that social capital may also have adverse effects, potentially fostering totalitarian and populist ideologies. This paper examines the political implications of two different types of social capita...

While the number of international students attending UK universities has been increasing in recent years, the 2021/22 and 2022/23 academic years saw a decline in applications from EU-domiciled students. However, the extent and varying impact of this decline remain to be estimated and disentangled from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using dif...

Technological advances have enabled the development and proliferation of digital data through the production, processing, storage and analysis of vast amounts of information from digital footprints. Data that previously could not be captured by analogue devices can now be recorded digitally. Digital data offer great opportunities in the field of po...

Description The COVID‐19 pandemic has impacted population movement around the world. Existing work has focused on countries of the Global North and restricted to the immediate effects of COVID-19 during 2020. Data have represented a major limitation to monitor changes in mobility patterns in Latin American countries. Drawing on aggregate anonymise...

Immigration is one of the most salient topics in public debate. Social media heavily influences opinions on immigration, often sparking polarized debates and offline tensions. Studying 220,870 immigration-related tweets in the UK, we assessed the extent of polarization, key content creators and disseminators, and the speed of content dissemination....

Rising levels of hardship since the introduction of austerity have rendered essential items unaffordable for many on low incomes with young children. Baby Banks—organisations freely providing essential items and equipment to those with, or expecting, a baby or young infant—have grown. These organisations have received little academic attention and...

People often move internationally to improve their personal situation. Yet, integration into the host society can be challenging and have negative immediate consequences on individuals' well-being. This paper explores the relationship between international migration and subjective well-being for a sample of European individuals. We use an instrumen...

The UK residential sector is energy inefficient and has an overwhelming reliance on natural gas as a heating source. For the UK to meet its 2050 net zero obligations, the sector will need to go through a process of decarbonisation. Previous studies acknowledge the spatial disparities of household energy consumption, but have neglected how consumpti...

Inadequate supply of transport infrastructure is often seen as a barrier to a sustainable future for cities globally. Such barriers often perpetuate significant inequalities in who can and who cannot benefit from sustainable transport opportunities, and as a result there is momentum for transformative urban planning to promote sustainable transport...

Los avances tecnológicos han permitido el desarrollo y almacenamiento de grandes cantidades de datos digitales. El comportamiento humano y las interacciones sociales que antes no podían capturarse, ahora pueden registrante a partir de las huellas digitales que dejan las personas al utilizar diferentes plataformas, como las redes sociales, video str...

Europe is facing a novel demographic shift in population decline. Across the continent an increasing number of countries and sub-national areas are undergoing trajectories of depopulation, threatening to challenge the functioning of societies. Understanding the likely population futures is essential in preparing for such unprecedented population ch...

The escalation of conflict in Ukraine has triggered the largest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII. As of early April 2024, over 5.9 million people have fled Ukraine. Large‐scale efforts have been made to identify the major receiving countries. However, less is known about the subnational areas within host countries where refugees have migrated. I...

The term ‘left behind’ has come to connote political disaffection, alongside social and spatial inequalities in wealth and opportunity. Yet the term is also widely contested, often prioritising a regional and economic perspective at the expense of a more local and nuanced approach. In response, we argue that neighbourhood context is integral to und...

The immediate effects of COVID-19 on mortality, fertility, and internal and international migration have been widely studied. Particularly, immigration to high-income countries declined in 2020. However, the persistence of these declines and the extent to which they have impacted different migration flows are yet to be established. Drawing on immig...

This paper investigates whether the British pattern of an early transition from school to work persists. We apply sequence analysis to data from the British Household Panel Survey and the U.K. Household Longitudinal Study to study how education and employment trajectories of young adults born in 1974–1990 differ by 5‐year birth cohort, gender, and...

Whilst the numbers of international students attending UK universities has been increasing in recent years, the 2021/22 and 2022/23 academic years saw a decline in applications from EU domiciled students. This decline is hypothesised to represent a direct result of the end of free movement due to the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU), wi...

Population decline has emerged as the dominant direction of population change across European sub-national areas. Despite this, its underpinning demographic causes remain under-researched and thus largely unknown. We use annual demographic count estimate data, including births, deaths, and net-migration, to understand their contributions to sub-nat...

Higher education is a key global market and considerable literature has focused on investigating the determinants of international student mobility (ISM). However, less is known about the extent to which the relative influence of these factors is moderated by local conditions and vary across origin countries. Drawing on a unique data set of undergr...

Political discontent, frequently mirrored in voting patterns, extends beyond ballot votes. By focusing on Valparaiso, Chile, we introduce a more comprehensive measure, external political efficacy (EPE), capturing a sense of abandonment and gauging public sentiment towards the political system’s responsiveness to their needs. Our analysis addresses...

Over the past two decades, family structures have diversified. International migration has led to a rise in the number of families in which at least one parent is foreign-born. Increases have also been observed in both the rate of partnership separation, leading to a greater number of single-parent households and an increase in the number of famili...

Censuses are an important source of international migration flow data. However, their use is limited since they indirectly reflect migration, capturing migrant transitions over long intervals rather than migration events, whilst also underestimating the number of infants and deaths. Censuses also neglect migration of those who are native-born when...

Political discontent, frequently mirrored in voting patterns, extends beyond ballot votes. By focusing on Valparaiso, Chile, we introduce a more comprehensive measure—external political efficacy (EPE)—capturing a sense of abandonment and gauging public sentiment towards the political system's responsiveness to their needs. Our analysis addresses in...

Studies on mobility inequalities have so far mostly relied on Survey data or Censuses. While such studies have demonstrated that inequalities strongly influence everyday mobility choices, these data sources lack granular information on people’s movements on a daily basis. By capitalising on high spatio-temporal resolution data provided by Spectus.a...

The COVID‐19 pandemic has impacted the national systems of population movement around the world. Existing work has focused on countries of the Global North and restricted to the immediate effects of COVID-19 data during 2020. Data have represented a major limitation to monitor change in mobility patterns in countries in the Global South. Drawing on...

Higher education is a key global market and considerable literature has focused on investigating the determinants of international student mobility (ISM). However, less is known about the extent to which the relative influence of these factors is moderated by local conditions and vary across origin countries. Drawing on a unique dataset of undergra...

Up-to-date information on different modes of travel to monitor transport traffic and evaluate rapid urban transport planning interventions is often lacking. Transport systems typically rely on traditional data sources providing outdated mode-of-travel data due to their data latency, infrequent data collection and high cost. To address this issue, w...

This research note explores the impact of international migration on global population distribution since the 1990s. The impact of migration on population distribution is a function of both the intensity as well as the effectiveness of migration, that is the imbalance between flows and counter-flows. The presence of reciprocal flows is a well-recog...

Using a multilevel modelling approach, this study investigates the impact of urban inequalities on changes to rail ridership across Chicago’s “L” stations during the pandemic, the mass vaccination rollout, and the full reopening of the city. Initially believed to have an equal impact, COVID-19 disproportionally impacted the ability of lower socioec...

The escalation of conflict in Ukraine has triggered the largest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII. As of mid-April 2023, over 8.2 million people have fled Ukraine. Large-scale efforts have been made to identify the major receiving countries. However, less is known about the sub-national areas within host countries where refugees have migrated. Id...

Immigration is a key ingredient for social cohesion and economic development. Yet, it is often portrayed as a major threat to national identity, values, economic stability and security, particularly during challenging times, like the current COVID-19 pandemic. These misrepresentations often result in acts of intolerance, discrimination, racism, xen...

We assess if a 'donut effect' has occurred in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results show a synchronized 30% drop in housing purchases during the national lockdown in 2020, followed by a significant increase from 2021 across the rural-urban continuum, including core cities, suburbs, towns and rural areas, exceeding pre-pandemic levels. We...

The COVID-19 pandemic has potentially altered the system of population movement around the world. As COVID-19 hit cities the hardest in the wake of the pandemic, apocalyptic headlines anticipated the ‘death of cities’. Yet, little was known about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cities and the ways it has shaped the patterns of internal popul...

Walmart is a major player in the US retail sector and was one of the grocery corporations that bucked the trend of declining retail sales at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Particularly in the initial stages of the pandemic, governance priorities focussed on restricting the movement of people and closing non-essential retailers and serv...

Technological advances have enabled the emerge of ‘Big Data’ through the production, processing, analysis and storage of large volumes of digital data. Data that could not previously be stored or used to be captured using analogue devices can now be digitally recorded. This chapter identifies and discusses the existing and future challenges and opp...

Previous studies have examined the impact of COVID-19 on mortality and fertility. However, little is known about the effect of the pandemic on constraining international migration. We use Eurostat and national statistics data on immigration and ARIMA time-series models to quantify the impact of COVID-19 on immigration flows in 15 high-income countr...

Population decline is a key contemporary demography challenge. Previous work has measured the national extent of population decline, and we know that it is more acute in Japan and Eastern Europe and is set to accelerate across many industrialized countries. Yet, little is known about the population trajectories leading to current trends of depopula...

The literature of spatial inequalities is currently “fragmented” across ethnic segregation and built environment domains. Inequalities in these dimensions are often considered in isolation one from another. For example, ethnic segregated areas are often more disadvantaged in terms of unemployment, housing conditions and access to services. By using...

Population decline is projected to become widespread in Europe, with the continental population set to reverse its longstanding trajectory of growth within the next 5 years. This represents unfamiliar demographic territory. Despite this, literature on decline remains sparse and our understanding porous. Particular epistemological deficiencies stem...

Existing empirical work has focused on assessing the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical interventions on human mobility to contain the spread of COVID‐19. Less is known about the ways in which the COVID‐19 pandemic has reshaped the spatial patterns of population movement within countries. Anecdotal evidence of an urban exodus from large cities to r...

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, anecdotal evidence of a “rural revival” emerged mirroring the “urban exodus” hypothesis. Currently, we know that internal migration to rural areas increased in some countries during 2020, although not with the intensity speculated by the media. However, little is known about the attributes of rural area...

Global warming is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events leading to an increased risk of large-scale population displacements. Since June 2022, Pakistan has recorded destructive flash flooding resulting from melting glaciers and torrential monsoon rainfall. Emergency responses have documented flood-related deaths, injuries and damaged i...

Drawing on register records from 2019 to 2021, we analyse the impact of COVID-19 on internal and international migration across the 50 Spanish provinces (NUTS-3 regions). Our results show that net-international migration declined in all the provinces during the pandemic, particularly in high-population-density areas. Certain depopulated provinces r...

COVID-19, and the wider social and economic impacts that a global pandemic entails, led to unprecedented reductions in energy consumption globally. Whilst estimates of changes in energy consumption have emerged at the national scale, detailed sub-regional estimates to allow for global comparisons are less developed. Using night-time light satellite...

Global warming is increasing the frequency of extreme weather events leading to an increased risk of large-scale population displacements. Since June 2022, Pakistan has recorded destructive flash flooding resulting from melting glaciers and torrential monsoon rainfall. Emergency responses have documented flood-related deaths, injuries and infrastru...

This editorial describes improvements REGION implemented in the first months of 2022. Although they are not directly visible to authors or readers, they are important for the quality of the journal and for the visibility of the articles published in REGION.

The escalation of conflict in Ukraine has triggered the largest refugee crisis in Europe since WWII. As of 17 August 2022, over 6.6 million people have fled Ukraine. Large-scale efforts have been made to collect data and measure the scale of forced population displacements, and identify the major receiving countries of these population flows. Curre...

International graduates have been shown to experience comparatively poor outcomes in their transition to the host labour market after course completion. In Australia, international graduates typically fare worse than domestic graduates in the labour market, with new evidence pointing to a deterioration in their relative labour market position over...

Drawing on register records from 2019 to 2021, we analyse the impact of COVID-19 on internal and international migration across the 50 Spanish provinces (NUTS 3 regions of Eurostat). Our results show that net international migration declined in all the provinces during the pandemic, particularly in high population density areas. Certain depopulated...

Low fertility is set to worsen economic problems in many developed countries, and maternity, paternity, and parental leave have emerged as key pro-natal policies. Gender inequity in the balance of domestic and formal work has been identified as a key driver of low fertility, and leave can potentially equalise this balance and thereby promote fertil...

Identifying and understanding areas of interest are essential for urban planning. These areas are normally defined from static features of the resident population and urban amenities. Research has emphasised the importance of human mobility activity to capture the changing nature of these areas throughout the day, and the use of digital application...

Previous studies have examined the impact of COVID-19 on mortality and fertility. However, little is known about the effect of the pandemic on constraining international migration. We quantify the impact of COVID-19 on immigration flows in 15 high-income countries by forecasting their counterfactual levels in 2020 assuming no pandemic and comparing...

Spatial interaction (SI) modelling is a core tool in spatial data modelling to predict spatial flows and understand their underpinning factors. SI modelling has been applied to provide data insights and support decision making in multiple settings, notably in transport, human mobility, migration and epidemiology. While considerable progress has bee...

During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, anecdotal evidence of a “rural revival” emerged mirroring the “urban exodus” hypothesis. Currently, we know that internal migration to rural areas increased in some countries during 2020, although not with the intensity speculated by the media. However, little is known about the attributes of rural area...

Existing empirical work has focused on assessing the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions on human mobility to contain the spread of COVID-19. Less is known about the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped the spatial patterns of population movement within countries. Anecdotal evidence of an urban exodus from large cities to...

Existing empirical work has analysed the impacts of COVID‐19 on mortality, fertility and international migration. Less is known about the ways in which the COVID‐19 pandemic has influenced the patterns of internal migration. Anecdotal reports of mass migration from large cities to less populated areas have emerged, but lack of data has prevented em...

The term “left behind” connotes inequalities in wealth and opportunity, and political disaffection. Although definitional disagreements persist, we propose three key insights to understanding what “left behind” is and why it matters: spatial scale, trajectory, and multidimensionality. Emphasising local and individual experiences, we develop a two-s...

The spatial distribution of activities and agents within cities, conceptualised as an urban function, profoundly affects how different areas are perceived and lived. This dataset introduces the concept of functional signatures - contiguous areas of a similar urban function delineated based on enclosed tessellation cells (ETC) - and applies it to th...

Cities often lack up-to-date data analytics to evaluate and implement transport planning interventions to achieve sustainability goals, as traditional data sources are expensive, infrequent, and suffer from data latency. Mobile phone data provide an inexpensive source of geospatial information to capture human mobility at unprecedented geographic a...

Given an increasingly volatile climate, the relationship between weather and transit ridership has drawn increasing interest. However, challenges stemming from spatio-temporal dependency and non-stationarity have not been fully addressed in modelling and predicting transit ridership under the influence of weather conditions especially with the trad...

Existing empirical work has analysed the impacts ofCOVID-19 on mortality, fertility and international migration. Less is known about the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has influenced the patterns of internal migration. Anecdotal reports of mass migration from large cities to less populated areas have emerged but lack of data has prevented empi...

Population decline is projected to become widespread in Europe, with the continental population set to reverse its longstanding trajectory of growth within the next five years. This represents unfamiliar demographic territory. Despite this, literature on decline remains sparse and our understanding porous. Particular epistemological deficiencies st...

Data have become a central pillar of society. Technological advances in computational power, storage and network platforms have enabled the production, processing, analysis and storage of large volumes of digital data. Information that previously could not be stored, or captured can now be digitally recorded. Digital data have become a key asset fo...

Fertility in Taiwan has been persistently low since 2003. Theorists have attributed this to gender inequity in domestic labour, yet this relationship has not been statistically tested. We assess the way in which the division of housework influences the probability of having an additional child. We assess this relationship for a sample of childbeari...

Given emerging evidence on their troubled transition to work, this study examines patterns, trends and changes in the labour market outcomes of international graduates remaining in Australia at 4 months following course completion between 1998 and 2015. Using the Australian Graduate Survey, this study shows that the share of international graduates...

Tras la irrupción de la pandemia de COVID-19, diversas voces, sobre todo desde ámbitos no académicos, especularon acerca de un potencial éxodo urbano hacia las áreas rurales. Sin embargo, esta hipótesis no ha podido ser corroborada hasta ahora debido a la falta de datos con el detalle territorial adecuado. En este Perspectives Demogràfiques se mues...

After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, several commentators, especially from non-academic fields, speculated about a potential exodus from urban to rural areas. However, this hypothesis has not been confirmed due to a lack of data with information capturing changes of residence at local level. This issue of Perspectives Demogràfiques offers t...

Després de la irrupció de la pandèmia de COVID-19, diverses veus, sobretot des d’àmbits no acadèmics, van especular sobre un potencial èxode urbà cap a les àrees rurals. Malgrat això, aquesta hipòtesi no ha pogut ser corroborada fins ara a causa de la manca de dades amb el detall territorial adequat. En aquest Perspectives Demogràfiques es mostren...

Large-scale coordinated efforts have been dedicated to understanding the global health and economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet, the rapid spread of discrimination and xenophobia against specific populations has largely been neglected. Understanding public attitudes toward migration is essential to counter discrimination against immi...

This paper leverages on the opportunities presented by individual level GPS data to study human mobility. It develops a methodology to understand the spatio-temporal properties of collective movements using network science. Through a spatially-weighted community detection approach, we derived functional neighbourhoods from human mobility patterns f...

This paper leverages on the opportunities presented by individual-level GPS data to study human mobility. It develops a methodology to understand the spatio-temporal properties of collective movements using network science. Through a spatially-weighted community detection approach , we derived functional neighbourhoods from human mobility patterns...

This report discusses the essential findings and learnings from a collaborative research project with the University of Liverpool, investigating the use of Twitter data to track immigration sentiment during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the report will (a) demonstrate how immigrants have experienced acts of discrimination...

Persistent spatial inequalities represent a menace to economic progress, social cohesion and political stability. The UK stands out as one of the most unequal countries in the industrialised world. This paper investigates intra‐regional and inter‐urban inequalities at the neighbourhood level in Britain during a 40‐year period, 1971‐2011. Using a no...

Understanding public opinion towards immigrants is key to prevent acts of violence, discrimination and abuse. Traditional data sources, such as surveys, provide rich insights into the formation of such attitudes; yet, they are costly and offer limited temporal granularity, providing only a partial understanding of the dynamics of attitudes towards...

Technological advances have enabled the emerge of ‘Big Data’ through the production, processing, analysis and storage of large volumes of digital data. Data that could not previously be stored or used to be captured using analog devices can now be digitally recorded. This chapter identifies and discusses the existing and future challenges and oppor...

Current planning strategies promoting suburbanisation, land use zoning and low built-up density areas tend to increase the environmental footprint of cities. In the last decades, international and local government plans are increasingly targeted at making urban areas more sustainable. Urban structure has been proved to be an important factor guidin...