Horgen


Horgen is a municipality in the district of Horgen in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland.
It is one of the larger towns along the south bank of the Lake of Zurich.
On 1 January 2018 the former municipality of Hirzel merged into the municipality of Horgen.

History

Horgen is also the type-site of Switzerland's middle Neolithic archaeological culture. The settlement there, the so-called Horgner Kultur, produced examples of a type of crude pottery with parallels to the Seine-Oise-Marne culture of northern France. Horgen is first mentioned in 952 as Horga.

Geography

Horgen has an area of. Of this area, 27.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while 49.9% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 20.4% is settled and the remainder is non-productive. housing and buildings made up 12.5% of the total area, while transportation infrastructure made up the rest. Of the total unproductive area, water made up 1.6% of the area. , 16% of the total municipal area was undergoing some type of construction.
The large municipality stretches from the shores of Lake Zurich, near Wädenswil over the Zimmerberg-Plateau where the decentralized village of Horgenberg is found, though the Sihl Valley, to the peak of the Albis chain. It includes the villages of Horgen, Arn and Horgenberg.
Until 1773, Horgen included the now separate municipalities of Oberrieden and Hirzel. The Sihl forest became part of the city of Zürich in 1803. However the Horgen city council refused to acknowledge this until 1877.

Demographics

Horgen has a population of. , 27.1% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. the gender distribution of the population was 49% male and 51% female. Over the last 10 years the population has grown at a rate of 10.7%. Most of the population speaks German , with Italian being second most common and Albanian being third.
In the 2007 election the most popular party was the SVP which received 35.6% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SPS, the FDP and the CSP.
The age distribution of the population is children and teenagers make up 20.7% of the population, while adults make up 64.1% and seniors make up 15.2%. In Horgen about 73% of the population have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education. There are 7850 households in Horgen.
Horgen has an unemployment rate of 2.66%. , there were 213 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 39 businesses involved in this sector. 2017 people are employed in the secondary sector and there are 167 businesses in this sector. 6892 people are employed in the tertiary sector, with 623 businesses in this sector. 56.5% of the working population were employed full-time, and 43.5% were employed part-time.
there were 5924 Catholics and 6170 Protestants in Horgen. In the 2000 census, religion was broken down into several smaller categories. From the, 39.3% were some type of Protestant, with 36.9% belonging to the Swiss Reformed Church and 2.4% belonging to other Protestant churches. 33.6% of the population were Catholic. Of the rest of the population, 7% were Muslim, 9.5% belonged to another religion, 4.2% did not give a religion, and 11.7% were atheist or agnostic.
The historical population is given in the following table:
yearpopulation
146767 households
16341,175
16541,560
17802,837
18362,886
18504,844
19006,883
19309,320
195010,118
197015,691
200017,432
201018,935

Transportation

The A3 motorway passes through the municipality and has a junction in the south of the town.
The municipality of Horgen is served by four railway stations. Of these two are relatively close to each other in the lakeside part of the municipality, whilst the other two are some distance away from the centre of the town in the Sihl Valley:
The Zimmerberg bus line, provided by the Sihltal Zürich Uetliberg Bahn, connects the Zimmerberg region and parts of the Sihl Valley.
In the summer there are regular boats to Zürich-Bürkliplatz as well as along the lake to Rapperswil, run by the Zürichsee-Schifffahrtsgesellschaft. The Horgen–Meilen car ferry connects Horgen and Meilen across the width of Lake Zurich, and one of the line's ships carries the name Horgen.

Notable people