Urban and rural areas
Switzerland’s population is predominantly urban, with three-quarters living in towns and cities.
Switzerland has a population density of 226 inhabitants per square kilometre. This places it among the ten most densely populated countries in Europe, with a population density twice that of the European Union average. However, it should not be forgotten that much of the country is mountainous. For this reason, most of the population lives in a densely populated area known as the Central Plateau. This region is fertile and relatively flat: it lies between the Jura Mountains and the Alps and stretches from Lake Geneva to Lake Constance. Here, the population density is almost 600 people per square kilometre.
There are no large cities in Switzerland with more than one million inhabitants, but most people live in urban areas, with the vast majority of the population living in the city centres and their surrounding areas. Almost half of the total population lives in Switzerland's largest conurbations: Zurich, Geneva, Basel, Bern and Lausanne.