was an administrative centre for one or several rural municipalities, with special regulations and privileges in common with towns. The term became obsolete in 1971 when the different types of municipalities were abandoned and a standard form for all municipalities was introduced. Samhälle () is a common concept used by for urban areas that are intermediary in size between a town and a village. The term "samhälle" is also used in Swedish to denote "society", "community" or "state". (Compare: Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.) A samhälle does not necessarily meet the criteria for the current tätort – or even småort concept. By () is a traditional term but may in colloquial use refer to a suburb or town of considerable size. If at all used in the context of statistics, it must be assumed that the size of a by is smaller than that of a småort. (NB! Not to be confused with the same word in Danish and Norwegian, where it means town, while a village is called landsby.) Seasonal areas and suburbs Fritidshusområde () is in statistical context an area with less than 50 permanent inhabitants but at least 50 houses (in practice: weekend cottages/summer houses) meeting the criterion that they are not more than 150 metres apart. About a third of Sweden's "second homes" are located in such areas. The term belongs also to everyday usage, although less strictly defined. Förstad and förort () are much used terms with a somewhat negative connotation. Statistics Before 2015 delimitation of localities were made by Statistics Sweden every five years, since then it is trialling a three-year update period. The number of urban areas in Sweden increased by 56 to 1,956 in 2010. A total of 8,016,000 – 85 per cent – of the Swedish population lived in an urban area; occupying only 1,3 per cent of Sweden's total land area, and the most populous urban area is Stockholm at 1,4 million people. See also Urban areas in the Nordic countries List of urban areas in the Nordic countries List of cities in Sweden List of metropolitan areas in Sweden List of municipalities of Sweden List of urban areas in Sweden Largest urban areas of the European Union Geography of Sweden Chumbus (disambiguation) References External links Statistics Sweden (Swedish) Types of administrative division Demographics of Sweden