Switzerland continues to urbanise, statistics show

Urban sprawl: a view over Switzerland's biggest city, Zurich. KEYSTONE/Christian Beutler

Between 2010 and 2020, three new urban areas and ten cities were registered in Switzerland, where just 14% of the population now lives in the countryside. 

Rural municipalities nevertheless account for 57% of the country’s surface area, the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) said on Thursday. Cities meanwhile account for 17% of surface area, but are home to 65% of the population and 76% of the workforce. Just 9% of employees work in rural municipalities.  

Switzerland’s 52 urban agglomerations are home to 6.6 million people. Their share has grown by 1.4% within ten years and almost half of Switzerland’s municipalities are part of an agglomeration. An agglomeration consists of a densely populated urban centre with surrounding municipalities functionally linked to the centre.  

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According to this definition and to the latest data, three new agglomerations were noted between 2010 and 2020: Burgdorf (canton Bern), Mels-Sargans (St Gallen) and Reinach (Aargau). Of the 49 former agglomerations, 13 retained their size, while in the others, municipalities were added or dropped.

Population figures meanwhile remained the same, while the number of core municipalities generally increased and that of surrounding municipalities decreased. 

Ten new cities  

Some 172 municipalities now fulfil the statistical requirements to be called a city, ten more than in 2010. No municipality in the country lost its city status over the period. The statistical term is defined in such a way that rural municipalities consisting of several villages are not considered cities.  

Overall, 24% of the 2,131 Swiss municipalities are urban, 49% are rural and 27% are something in between. The classifications are based on density, size and other features of the municipalities as well as their degree of functional connectedness. The interplay of population, economic and urban development as well as the expansion of transport routes impacts these characteristics.

The FSO reconsiders the categorisation of municipalities every ten years. 

Adapted from German by DeepL/kc

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