National-, regional- and urban-scale population deconcentration in West Germany

"Internal migration patterns during the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s are evaluated at a regional scale intermediate to those utilized in previous core-to-periphery and urbanization-to-counterurbanization studies of West Germany. A spatial deconcentration of the West German population is evident in the form of redistribution down the metropolitan size hierarchy....A spatial deconcentration of manufacturing and service employment partially explains the net migration losses experienced by the Rhine-Ruhr and the Rhine-Main-Neckar [regions].... This study provides an alternative core-periphery delimitation scheme which can be applied to the metropolitan system in the western part of newly unified Germany."