Reinach
Description
Reinach is a municipality in the district Arlesheim in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland.
History
Reinach is first mentioned around 1168-76 as Rinacho.
Geography
Reinach has an area, as of 2009, of 7 square km. Of this area, 1.84 km2 (0.71 sq mi) or 26.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while 1.16 km2 (0.45 sq mi) or 16.6% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 3.87 km2 (1.49 sq mi) or 55.3% is settled (buildings or roads), 0.06 km2 (15 acres) or 0.9% is either rivers or lakes and 0.04 km2 (9.9 acres) or 0.6% is unproductive land.
Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 4.1% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 33.0% and transportation infrastructure made up 11.9%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.6% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 4.7%. Out of the forested land, 15.1% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.4% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 21.1% is used for growing crops and 2.9% is pastures, while 2.3% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water.
The municipality is located in the Arlesheim district. The original village grew up along a small stream. At the beginning of the 21st century, it is part of the agglomeration of Basel at the crossing of the Basel-Aesch-Birstal and Dornach-Therwil-Leimental lines.
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Argent, from a Bar Azure a semi-fleur-de-lis issuant of the same.
Religion
From the 2000 census, 6,822 or 37.2% were Roman Catholic, while 6,114 or 33.4% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 184 members of an Orthodox church (or about 1.00% of the population), there were 58 individuals (or about 0.32% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 494 individuals (or about 2.70% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 30 individuals (or about 0.16% of the population) who were Jewish, and 597 (or about 3.26% of the population) who were Islamic. There were 71 individuals who were Buddhist, 69 individuals who were Hindu and 15 individuals who belonged to another church. 3,321 (or about 18.12% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 548 individuals (or about 2.99% of the population) did not answer the question.