Arlesheim district has an area,, of. Of this area, or 28.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 28.9% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 40.7% is settled, or 1.2% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.2% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 4.6% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 21.3% and transportation infrastructure made up 9.3%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.3% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 4.1%. Out of the forested land, 27.5% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.4% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 17.8% is used for growing crops and 7.4% is pastures, while 3.8% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.
Municipalities
Arlesheim contains a total of fifteen municipalities:
Demographics
Arlesheim district has a population of. , 18.5% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Most of the population speaks German, with Italian language being second most common and French being third. There are 132 people who speak Romansh. , the gender distribution of the population was 48.4% male and 51.6% female. The population was made up of 120,288 Swiss citizens, and 29,054 non-Swiss residents In there were 917 live births to Swiss citizens and 298 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 1,140 deaths of Swiss citizens and 84 non-Swiss citizen deaths. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens decreased by 223 while the foreign population increased by 214. There were 28 Swiss men and 40 Swiss women who emigrated from Switzerland. At the same time, there were 593 non-Swiss men and 573 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 was an increase of 13 and the non-Swiss population change was an increase of 1,143 people. This represents a population growth rate of 0.8%. The age distribution,, in the Arlesheim district is; 9,085 children or 6.1% of the population are between 0 and 6 years old and 19,004 teenagers or 12.7% are between 7 and 19. Of the adult population, 16,147 people or 10.8% of the population are between 20 and 29 years old. 18,616 people or 12.5% are between 30 and 39, 24,589 people or 16.5% are between 40 and 49, and 30,141 people or 20.2% are between 50 and 64. The senior population distribution is 23,520 people or 15.7% of the population are between 65 and 79 years old and there are 8,240 people or 5.5% who are over 80. , there were 53,006 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 72,020 married individuals, 8,242 widows or widowers and 8,331 individuals who are divorced. There were 21,805 households that consist of only one person and 2,612 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 64,712 households that answered this question, 33.7% were households made up of just one person and 339 were adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 20,869 married couples without children, 16,599 married couples with children There were 3,388 single parents with a child or children. There were 788 households that were made up unrelated people and 924 households that were made some sort of institution or another collective housing. the average price to rent a two-room apartment was about 859.00 CHF, a three-room apartment was about 1070.00 CHF and a four-room apartment cost an average of 1355.00 CHF. The historical population is given in the following chart: Colors= id:lightgrey value:gray id:darkgrey value:gray ImageSize = width:960 height:210 PlotArea = height:150 left:100 bottom:50 right:100 AlignBars = justify DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:150000 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:30000 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:5000 start:0 PlotData= color:yellowgreen width:40 mark: align:center bar:1850 from:start till:12003 text:"12,003" bar:1860 from:start till:14230 text:"14,230" bar:1870 from:start till:15545 text:"15,545" bar:1880 from:start till:19972 text:"19,972" bar:1888 from:start till:21903 text:"21,903" bar:1900 from:start till:26439 text:"26,439" bar:1910 from:start till:32052 text:"32,052" bar:1920 from:start till:36558 text:"36,558" bar:1930 from:start till:45321 text:"45,321" bar:1941 from:start till:46715 text:"46,715" bar:1950 from:start till:53547 text:"53,547" bar:1960 from:start till:83583 text:"83,583" bar:1970 from:start till:122958 text:"122,958" bar:1980 from:start till:134435 text:"134,435" bar:1990 from:start till:140147 text:"140,147" bar:2000 from:start till:141599 text:"141,599"
Politics
In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SP which received 27.33% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SVP, the FDP and the CVP. In the federal election, a total of 50,214 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 49.3%.
Religion
From the, 49,324 or 34.8% were Roman Catholic, while 50,232 or 35.5% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 1,560 members of an Orthodox church, there were 646 individuals who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 4,056 individuals who belonged to another Christian church. There were 266 individuals who were Jewish, and 4,524 who were Islamic. There were 479 individuals who were Buddhist, 867 individuals who were Hindu and 157 individuals who belonged to another church. 24,848 belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 4,640 individuals did not answer the question.
Education
In the Arlesheim district about 59,226 or of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 24,217 or have completed additional higher education. Of the 24,217 who completed tertiary schooling, 58.4% were Swiss men, 25.5% were Swiss women, 9.6% were non-Swiss men and 6.5% were non-Swiss women.
