Urban areas in Sweden

Swedish terminology on populated localities is notoriously hard to translate to languages outside of the group of Finnish and Scandinavian languages. Additionally, there exist some peculiar definitions from the field of statistics, most of which are disregarded or unknown by laymen.

Definitions

• tätort is the central concept, and one that is actually commonly agreed on. A tätort is any village, town, or city with a population of at least 200 for which the contiguous built-up area meet the criterion that houses are not more than 200 meters apart when discounting rivers, parks, roads, etc. A tätort may be a conurbation of several towns. Tätort is sometimes translated to "urban area", although below the translation "non-rural area" is preferred.

• smÃ¥ort is a concept, lesser known outside of the field of statistics, for settlements just below the limit to be defined as tätort. It is defined as a contiguous built-up area with no more than 150 meters between houses and 50–199 inhabitants. In a bureaucratic mindset, a smÃ¥ort is rural. In a rural mindset, this is not neccessarily so.

• fritidshusomrÃ¥de is in statistical context an area with less than 50 permanent inhabitants but at least 50 houses (in practice: weekend cottages/summer houses) meeting the criterion that they are not more than 150 metres apart. About a third of Sweden's "second homes" are located in such areas. The term belongs also to everyday usage, although less strictly defined, and with somewhat negative connotations.

• by is the standard term for village and hamlet, but may in some contexts, notably for Scania, be used for suburbs and towns of considerable size. If at all used in the context of statistics, it must be assumed that the size of a by is smaller than that of a smÃ¥ort. (NB! Not to be confused with the same word in Danish and Norwegian that means town/city.)

• centralort is mostly used in the meaning municipal seat or (municipal) center of service, commerce and administration for a area. In a historical context, centralort may be seen used interchangeably with tingsplats, i.e. the site of the ting of a hundred or of a historical province.

• huvudort is rarely used for seats of local government, i.e. specifically a municipal seat.

• samhälle is a much used concept whose concrete meaning is a locality in size and importance intermediary between that of a town and a that of a village. Confusingly, the term is also used abstractly to mean "society", "community", or even "state". (Compare: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.) A samhälle does not neccessarily meet the criteria for tätort — not even for smÃ¥ort.

• municipalsamhälle is a dated term no longer used outside of historical contexts. Its meaning was in effect similar to that of centralort, but governmentally applied only to localities that weren't towns or market towns.

• köping is a term that since 1971 is abolished in governmental and statistical contexts, and only rarely kept in use by laymen, although it has survived as part of the names of several towns. The meaning was a locality with an intermediary legal status below that of a town, i.e. a market town.

• stad is the Swedish term for towns and cities. In a context of statistics, it may be restricted to towns with a population greater than 10,000, which is a restriction counter-intuitive to most Swedes. Judicially, the term is obsolete since 1971, but the term is still in common use.

• förstad and förort are much used terms for suburb.

• storstad is the nearest translation for the concept of city. There exists no specific criterion for its definition, but many Swedes would agree that a storstad has to be the center of a metropolitan area. It ought to be kept in mind that a distinction between town and city is really not made in Swedish. "Storstad" means literally "large town". Statistics Sweden count Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö as "storstad".

The municipalities of Sweden are administrative units containing rural, suburban and urban areas. In practice, most references in Sweden are to municipalities, not specifically to towns or cities, which complicates international comparisons.

When comparing the population of different cities, the urban area ("tätort") population is to prefer for the population of the municipality. The population of e.g. Stockholm should be accounted as ~1.2 million rather than the ~750,000 of the municipality, and Lund rather ~75,000 than ~100,000.

Statistics

Data are computed by Statistics Sweden every five years. The latest data are as of December 31, 2000. Then the total population of the non-rural areas in Sweden was 7,464,861 on an area of 5,210.373 km&sup2, which gives an average population density of 1,433/km².

Comparative figures for the entire country was: 8,882,792/410,335.40 km² = 22/km².

• 84% of the Swedish population lives in non-rural areas (i.e. in tätorts).
• 50% lives in the 64 largest urban areas.
• A third lives in the 15 largest urban areas, and
• A quarter lives in the 5 largest.
• The largest and most populous urban area is Stockholm.

The largest urban areas

The most densely populated areas

Towns divided by municipality borders

Some urban areas are divided by municipal borders. 15 of these are municipal seats, though only two urban areas works as seats of several municipalities: Stockholm and Gothenburg. These include:

• 11 municipalities:
  • Stockholm urban area
• 4 municipalities:
  • Gothenburg urban area
• 3 municipalities:
  • Täby urban area
• 2 municipalities:
  • Baggetorp
  • Billdal
  • Emsfors
  • FÃ¥glavik
  • Gnesta UA
  • Hallsberg UA
  • Kvicksund
  • Kärsta och Bredsdal
  • Lanna in Närke
  • Lanna in SmÃ¥land
  • Ludvika UA
  • Löberöd
  • Malmö UA
  • Munkfors UA
  • Mölnlycke
  • Norrhult-Klavreström
  • Pukavik
  • Ramvik
  • Rydebäck
  • Saxtorpsskogen
  • Skoby
  • Skutskär
  • Tullstorp
  • Tumba
  • TÃ¥garp
  • Upplands Väsby UA
  • Vallentuna UA
  • Vejbystrand
  • Viken
  • Ã…motfors
  • Ã…storp UA
  • Östersund UA

See also

• Largest urban areas of the European Union
• Category:Towns and cities in Sweden

External links

• Tätort-statistics from Statistics Sweden