Stäfa has an area of. Of this area, 46.1% is used for agricultural purposes, while 18.8% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 34% is settled and the remainder is non-productive. housing and buildings made up 26.7% of the total area, while transportation infrastructure made up the rest. Of the total unproductive area, water made up 0.5% of the area. 35.8% of the total municipal area was undergoing some type of construction. It is located near Rapperswil on the north bank of the Lake Zürich in the Pfannenstiel region. In the local dialect it is called Stäfa. The early history of Stäfa is closely linked to Einsiedeln Abbey. 972 King Otto II confirmed in documents possessions of the abbey on the lake, including Steveia. The villages of Kehlhof and Uerikon are politically part of the town. Stäfa is linked with the German poetGoethe who once stayed overnight in the town.
Demographics
Stäfa has a population of. , 18.9% of the population was made up of foreign nationals. , the gender distribution of the population was 48.4% male and 51.6% female. Over the last 5 years, the population has grown by 4.1%. 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 32.8% 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 63.1% and seniors make up 16.2%. In Stäfa about 80.5% of the population have completed either non-mandatory upper secondary education or additional higher education. There are 5179 households in Stäfa. Stäfa has an unemployment rate of 2.14%. , there were 153 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 34 businesses involved in this sector. 1592 people are employed in the secondary sector and there are 103 businesses in this sector. 2551 people are employed in the tertiary sector, with 508 businesses in this sector. 55.3% of the working population were employed full-time, and 44.7% were employed part-time. there were 3545 Catholics and 6005 Protestants in Stäfa. In the 2000 census, religion was broken down into several smaller categories. From the, 50.9% were some type of Protestant, with 47.5% belonging to the Swiss Reformed Church and 3.4% belonging to other Protestant churches. 27.2% of the population were Catholic. Of the rest of the population, 3.2% were Muslim, 4.3% belonged to another religion, 3.6% did not give a religion, and 13.6% were atheist or agnostic.
