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:
“In our large cities, the population is godless, materialized,—no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, fevers, and appetites walking. How is it people manage to live on,—so aimless as they are? After their peppercorn aims are gained, it seems as if the lime in their bones alone held them together, and not any worthy purpose.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“[Madness] is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime. We behave. A fantastic and entire system of social control, by the threat of example as effective over the general population as detention centers in dictatorships, the image of the madhouse floats through every mind for the course of its lifetime.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)