ABSTRACT

In Sweden, it were principally geographers who have looked at the process of urbanisation, whilst historians have tended to concentrate on town histories, and have only begun to turn their attentions to the urbanisation process in the 1970s. There is no overall study of the growth and structural changes of the Swedish towns for the period under review, nor is there a comprehensive overview of urbanisation as such. In spite of the fact that towns have existed for a very long time and their populations have expanded over a similarly long period, it is very difficult to find an exhaustive and generally accepted definition of what urbanisation really means. The classic and most applicable definition of urbanisation has been advanced by Hope Tisdale, who argues that urbanisation is the process by which a growing section of the country's population comes to live in relatively densely populated, relatively large towns and urban-type communities.