Urban areas in Sweden

In Sweden, an urban area is called a tätort, meaning a "dense locality." To be an urban area, a place needs at least 200 people living there. These areas can be cities, towns, or larger villages. The term is only used for counting people and does not follow city or county borders.

Bigger urban areas, called cities or towns in Swedish (stad), need at least 10,000 people. Sweden counts urban areas in the same way as other Nordic countries like Denmark and Norway.

In 2018, Sweden had almost two thousand urban areas, and 87% of all Swedes lived in these places. The Swedish word tätort is often translated into English as "urban area," but the official term used by Statistics Sweden is "locality." This is similar to what the United States calls "census-designated places."

History

Before 1900, only towns and cities were called urban areas. But as more people moved to cities and new neighborhoods grew outside city limits, it became hard to tell which places were really cities. In 1910, a new way to count people in crowded places was started. By 1930, the word tätort meaning "dense place" was used. Rules changed again in 1965 so that places were counted based on how many people lived there, not on old city borders. In 1971, the idea of a "city" as a special kind of place was removed.

Terminology

Urban areas in Sweden, called tätort, are places where many people live close together. These areas are not defined by city or county lines, but by how many people are nearby.

Most urban areas are part of bigger groups called municipalities. These municipalities can include many smaller places. Some cities, like Stockholm urban area, spread across several municipalities.

When we talk about how many people live in a city, we usually use the tätort number. For example, Stockholm has about 1.6 million people in its urban area, not just the 990,000 in the municipality. Similarly, Lund has about 94,000 people in its urban area, not the 130,000 in its municipality.

Swedish definitions

Terms used for statistical purposes

In Sweden, an urban area is a place where at least 200 people live close together. These places can be cities, towns, or bigger villages. For a place to be an urban area, houses must be no more than 200 meters apart, not counting rivers, parks, or roads. This idea of an urban area is only for counting people and does not follow city or county lines.

There are also smaller places called smaller localities with between 50 and 199 people living close together. These are mostly used when talking about numbers and not in everyday talk.

Popular and traditional terms

Some big cities in Sweden, like Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, are called metropolitan areas. These are very large cities with many people living around them too.

The word town or city is not often used by officials for counting people, but it usually means a place with more than 10,000 people. There are also middle-sized towns.

Older words like market town are not used much anymore, except in some place names. These were places that had special rights but were smaller than towns.

The word community is sometimes used for places that are bigger than a village but smaller than a town. And village is a word for a very small place, smaller than a market town.

Seasonal areas and suburbs

Some areas in Sweden are used mostly for holidays, with fewer than 50 people living there all year but at least 50 houses close together, like weekend cottages. These are called seasonal areas.

Words like suburb are used for areas close to bigger cities, and they can sometimes have a negative meaning.

Statistics

See also: Geography of Sweden

In Sweden, places with at least 200 people are called urban areas. These can be cities, towns, or larger villages. Most people in Sweden, about 85 out of every 100, live in urban areas, even though they cover only a small part of the land.

As of December 2023, Sweden has more than 2,000 urban areas. The largest is Stockholm, with around 1.4 million people. There are 125 areas with at least 10,000 people.