The role of immigration in Zurich's historical growth

Mathias Lerch joined EPFL in 2021. Alain Herzog / 2022 EPFL - Demographer and migration specialist Mathias Lerch has shown that Zurich owes as much of its industrial era development to international immigration as it does to the rural exodus. The EPFL researcher will apply his method to the study of rapidly growing sub-Saharan cities. In a retrospective study on the city of Zurich published in January 2022, Mathias Lerch refined his method of analyzing demographics by expanding the scope of his study to the end of the 18th century. The city's online statistical directories were a gold mine of information that immersed him in the history and economic success of what is still the largest city in Switzerland. Lerch, the director of EPFL's Laboratory of Urban Demography, underscores the need to create better tools to understand today's urban growth in developing countries. "The role of international migration is often neglected in demographic studies," he says.