Wahlen (Bâle-Campagne)

Geschichte

Wahlen is a municipality in the district of Laufen in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland.GeographyWahlen has an area, of 5.42km2. Of this area, 3km2 or 55.4% is used for agricultural purposes, while 1.82km2 or 33.6% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 0.61km2 or 11.3% is settled (buildings or roads).Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 7.2% and transportation infrastructure made up 2.0%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.5% of the area Out of the forested land, 31.2% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2.4% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 27.9% is used for growing crops and 23.6% is pastures, while 3.9% is used for orchards or vine crops.Coat of armsThe blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules, a Lion rampant Or queued fourchy holding in the front paws a Crozier Argent.DemographicsWahlen has a population of., 6.7% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of 19.2%.Most of the population speaks German (1,197 or 96.5%), with French being second most common (9 or 0.7%) and Italian language being third (8 or 0.6%)., the gender distribution of the population was 50.5% male and 49.5% female. The population was made up of 1,249 Swiss citizens (92.3% of the population), and 104 non-Swiss residents (7.7%) Of the population in the municipality 500 or about 40.3% were born in Wahlen and lived there in 2000. There were 245 or 19.8% who were born in the same canton, while 349 or 28.1% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 83 or 6.7% were born outside of Switzerland.