Locality

An urban settlement is a cluster of buildings with at least 200 inhabitants. The delimitation is based on the population information of the previous year. Urban settlements are defined and delimited by the Finnish Environment Institute using geographic information methods that utilise the building and population data of Statistics Finland’s 250 m x 250 m grid data. The population size of grids containing buildings and their neighbouring grids, as well as the number of buildings and their floor area, are reviewed in the definition. From the uniform clusters of dwellings generated in the definition, the ones with at least 200 inhabitants are selected. All new urban settlements generated in the definition are named and numbered at Statistics Finland. In some years certain urban settlements may cease to meet the definition of urban settlement and thus disappear from the classification of urban settlements, merge into other urban settlements or withdraw from them. Administrative regional divisions do not affect the formation of urban settlements, and urban settlements do not follow municipal boundaries.