The Federal Statistical Office classifies municipalities by their role within agglomerations: core municipality, belt, or outside any agglomeration. A belt municipality shares its employment and consumption area with the neighbouring core.
This information corrects a naive reading of municipal figures. A belt municipality of 8,000 inhabitants does not have the retail fabric its population would suggest, because its inhabitants shop in the core. Conversely, a core municipality concentrates shops serving a population far larger than its own.
A municipality absent from the classification lies outside any agglomeration: that is information, not a missing value.
Reference source : Federal Statistical Office.
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The figures, canton by canton
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