Zwingen

Geschichte

Zwingen is a municipality in the district of Laufen in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland.GeographyZwingen has an area, of 4.62km2. Of this area, 1.54km2 or 33.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while 1.76km2 or 38.1% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 1.18km2 or 25.5% is settled (buildings or roads), 0.12km2 or 2.6% is either rivers or lakes and 0.01km2 or 0.2% is unproductive land.Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 4.8% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 6.9% and transportation infrastructure made up 8.9%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 3.0% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 1.9%. Out of the forested land, 34.6% of the total land area is heavily forested and 3.5% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 19.9% is used for growing crops and 12.8% is pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.Coat of armsThe blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Sable, two Battons fleury Argent in saltire.DemographicsZwingen has a population of., 15.6% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of 9.3%.Most of the population speaks German (1,781 or 88.3%), with Italian language being second most common (43 or 2.1%) and Turkish being third (40 or 2.0%). There are 39 people who speak French and 1 person who speaks Romansh.