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An urban area or () in
Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...
has a minimum of 200 inhabitants and may be a city, town or larger village. It is a purely statistical concept, not defined by any municipal or county boundaries. Larger urban areas synonymous with cities or towns ( sv, stad for both terms) for statistical purposes have a minimum of 10,000 inhabitants.. The same statistical definition is also used for urban areas in the other Nordic countries. In 2018, there were nearly two thousand urban areas in Sweden, which were inhabited by 87% of the Swedish population. ''Urban area'' is a common
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
translation of the Swedish term . The official term in English used by Statistics Sweden is, however, "
locality Locality may refer to: * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localities (Australia), in which a locality is a geographic subdivis ...
" ( sv, ort). It could be compared with " census-designated places" in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
.


History

Until the beginning of the 20th century, only the towns/cities were regarded as urban areas. The built-up area and the municipal entity were normally almost congruent. Urbanization and industrialization created, however, many new settlements without formal city status. New suburbs grew up just outside city limits, being '' de facto'' urban but '' de jure'' rural. This created a statistical problem. The census of 1910 introduced the concept of "densely populated localities in the countryside". The term ''tätort'' (literally "dense place") was introduced in 1930. The municipal amalgamations placed more and more rural areas within city municipalities, which was the other side of the same problem. The administrative boundaries were in fact not suitable for defining rural and urban populations. From 1950 rural and urban areas had to be separated even within city limits, as, e.g., the huge wilderness around Kiruna had been declared a "city" in 1948. From 1965 only "non-administrative localities" are counted, independently of municipal and county borders. In 1971 "city" was abolished as a type of municipality.


Terminology

Urban areas in the meaning of ''tätort'' are defined independently on the division into counties and municipalities, and are defined solely according to population density. In practice, most references in Sweden are to municipalities, not specifically to towns or cities, which complicates international comparisons. Most municipalities contain many localities (up to 26 in Kristianstad Municipality), but some localities are, on the other hand, multimunicipal.
Stockholm urban area The Stockholm urban area ( sv, Stockholms tätort) is the largest and most populous of the statistical localities or urban areas in Sweden. It has no administrative function of its own, but constitutes a continuous built-up area, which extends int ...
is spread over 11 municipalities. When comparing the population of different cities, the urban area (''tätort'') population is to prefer ahead of the population of the municipality. The population of, e.g.,
Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...
should be accounted as about 1.2 million rather than the approximately 800,000 of the municipality, and Lund rather about 75,000 than about 110,000.


Swedish definitions


Terms used for statistical purposes

* ( en, urban area, or locality) is the central concept used in statistics. The definition is agreed upon in the Nordic countries: An urban area 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. – without regard to the ward, municipal or county boundaries. Delimitation of localities are made by Statistics Sweden every three years starting 2015 on a trial basis, previously they were made every five years. * ( en, smaller locality) is a
rural In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are de ...
locality with 50–199 inhabitants in a contiguous built-up area with no more than 150 meters between houses. The concept is rarely used outside the field of statistics, where it is used for settlements just below the limit defined for . * ''Centralort'' ( en, central locality) is mostly used in the meaning municipal seat or municipal center of service, commerce and administration for an area.


Popular and traditional terms

* ''Storstad'' ( en, metropolitan area, literally "large city") is a term usually reserved for Sweden's three largest cities:
Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...
, Gothenburg and Malmö. Statistics Sweden uses the term metropolitan area ( sv, storstadsområde) for these three cities and their immediate surroundings and municipalities. * '' Stad'' ( en,
town A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an o ...
or
city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
) is the term avoided by Statistics Sweden, however, it roughly corresponds to urban areas with a population greater than 10,000. Judicially, the term ''stad'' has been obsolete since 1971, and is now mostly used describing localities which used to be chartered towns. The statistical category "large town" used by Statistics Sweden include municipalities with more than 90,000 inhabitants within a 30 km radius from the municipality centre. There is also a category ''medelstor stad'' "middle large town". * '' Köping'' ( en, market town) was also abolished as an official term in 1971 in governmental and statistical contexts, and is only rarely kept in use by laymen, although it has survived as part of the names of several smaller towns. The meaning was a locality with an intermediary legal status below that of a town. * ''Municipalsamhälle'' ( en, municipal community) was a term in use between 1875 and 1971, but it is no longer used outside of historical contexts. In 1863, Sweden was divided into 2,500 municipalities, whereof 89 were towns, 8 were market towns ( köpingar) and the rest rural municipalities ("landskommuner"). A "municipalsamhälle" was an administrative centre for one or several rural municipalities, with special regulations and privileges in common with towns. The term became obsolete in 1971 when the different types of municipalities were abandoned and a standard form for all municipalities was introduced. * ''Samhälle'' ( en, community) is a common concept used by for urban areas that are intermediary in size between a town and a village. The term "samhälle" is also used in Swedish to denote " society", "community" or " state". (Compare: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.) A ''samhälle'' does not necessarily meet the criteria for the current ''tätort'' – or even ''småort'' concept. * ''By'' ( en,
village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...
and hamlet) is a traditional term but may in colloquial use refer to a suburb or town 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 ''småort.'' (NB! Not to be confused with the same word in Danish and Norwegian, where it means town, while a village is called ''landsby''.)


Seasonal areas and suburbs

* ''Fritidshusområde'' ( en, seasonal area) 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 "
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s" are located in such areas. The term belongs also to everyday usage, although less strictly defined. * ''Förstad'' and ''förort'' ( en, suburb) are much used terms with a somewhat negative connotation.


Statistics

Before 2015 delimitation of localities were made by Statistics Sweden every five years, since then it is trialling a three-year update period. The number of urban areas in Sweden increased by 56 to 1,956 in 2010. A total of 8,016,000 – 85 per cent – of the Swedish population lived in an urban area; occupying only 1,3 per cent of Sweden's total land area, and the most populous urban area is
Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...
at 1,4 million people.


See also

* Urban areas in the Nordic countries ** List of urban areas in the Nordic countries *
List of cities in Sweden This is a list of cities in modern Sweden that once enjoyed city privileges, thus were entitled to call themselves town ( sv, stad, plural ''städer''). The year indicates the year they were established or when they were granted a royal ch ...
*
List of metropolitan areas in Sweden Sweden has three metropolitan areas consisting of the areas surrounding the three largest cities, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. The statistics have been retrieved from Statistics Sweden and the statistics released on 10 November 2014. The ...
*
List of municipalities of Sweden This is a list of municipalities of Sweden after the division at the turn of the year of 2011–12. There are 290 municipalities. All statistics are from 1 January 2013, except for population (30 September 2013) and density (1 January 2013 an ...
*
List of urban areas in Sweden There are 1,956 urban areas in Sweden as defined by Statistics Sweden Statistics Sweden ( sv, Statistiska centralbyrån ; SCB) is the Swedish government agency operating under the Ministry of Finance and responsible for producing official stat ...
* Largest urban areas of the European Union * Geography of Sweden * Chumbus (disambiguation)


References

{{reflist


External links


Statistics Sweden
(Swedish) Types of administrative division Demographics of Sweden