Population
Even though the Swiss Plateau takes only about 30% of the surface of Switzerland, 5 million people live there, which constitutes more than two thirds of the Swiss population. The population density is 380 people per square kilometer. All the Swiss cities with more than 50 000 inhabitants except Basel and Lugano are situated in the plateau, especially Bern, Geneva, Lausanne and Zurich. The agglomerations of these cities are the most populous areas. Other densely populated areas are the south edge of the Jura and the agglomerations of Lucerne, Winterthur and St. Gallen. Regions of the higher Swiss Plateau like the Jorat region, the Napf region or the Töss region are comparatively scarcely populated with little farming villages and scattered farms.
A majority is German-speaking, though the west is French-speaking. The language border has been stable for many centuries even though it falls neither on a geographical nor on a political delimitation. It passes from Biel/Bienne over Murten/Morat and Freiburg/Fribourg to the Fribourg Alps. The cities of Biel/Bienne, Murten/Morat and Freiburg/Fribourg are officially bilingual. Localities along the language border have usually both a German and a French name.
Read more about this topic: Swiss Plateau
Famous quotes containing the word population:
“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)
“America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.”
—Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)
“A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, “Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.””
—Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)