Over the last 200 years, social change increasingly appears as an unprecedented process of urbanisation. While around 10% of the population of Switzerland lived in a city around 1800, by the beginning of the 21st century around 75% were already living in urban areas. This urbanisation was accompanied by a continuous and fundamental change in the ways of life and production as well as in their spatial patterns and networks. Two points of this dynamic in space can be distinguished. On the one hand, there is the rapid internal growth of existing cities, especially from the second half of the 19th century until 1914. On the other hand, urbanization since the interwar period also means the transformation of rural areas through increasing integration into urban value-added processes.

Degree of urbanisation
The degree of urbanisation is a classification by the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat) based on the following three categories:

• cities, otherwise referred to as densely populated areas
• towns and suburbs, otherwise referred to as intermediate density areas
• rural areas, otherwise referred to as thinly populated areas

The term "urban areas" refers both to densely populated cities and to cities and suburbs of medium density.