Population
Main article: Demographics of SwitzerlandThe population of Switzerland is heavily urbanised. In 2009, 74% of the 7,785,800 inhabitants lived in urban areas. The distribution of population is shaped by the topography of the country, the plateau being the most populous area and including the major cities of Switzerland. With a population density of 450 inhabitants per km2, it is one of the most densely populated region in Europe. There are large disparities of population densities between the cantons lying in the plateau and those lying in the Alps. Thus, the population densities of the cantons of Lucerne, Solothurn and Zurich are respectively 261.0, 319.7 and 813.6 inhabitants per km2. On the other hand, the cantons of Uri and Graubünden are experiencing very low population densities, respectively 33.4 and 27.0 inhabitants per km2. In the southern Alps, the canton of Ticino is also experiencing a population density less than the national average, with 122.5 against 194.7 inhab/km2.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Switzerland
Famous quotes containing the word population:
“What happened at Hiroshima was not only that a scientific breakthrough ... had occurred and that a great part of the population of a city had been burned to death, but that the problem of the relation of the triumphs of modern science to the human purposes of man had been explicitly defined.”
—Archibald MacLeish (18921982)
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)