Brot-Plamboz
Encyclopedia
Brot-Plamboz is a municipality
Municipalities of Switzerland
Communes , also known as municipalities, are the smallest government division in Switzerland, numbering 2,596 . While many have a population of a few hundred citizens, the largest cities such as Zürich or Geneva also have the legal status of municipalities...

 in the district of Le Locle in the canton
Cantons of Switzerland
The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the federal state of Switzerland. Each canton was a fully sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency from the Treaty of Westphalia until the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848...

 of Neuchâtel in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.

History

Brot-Plamboz is first mentioned in 998 in the founding documents of the priory
Priory
A priory is a house of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. Priories may be houses of mendicant friars or religious sisters , or monasteries of monks or nuns .The Benedictines and their offshoots , the Premonstratensians, and the...

 of Bevaix, as Broch.

Geography

Brot-Plamboz has an area, , of 16 square kilometre. Of this area, 10.88 square kilometre or 67.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while 4.55 square kilometre or 28.4% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 0.43 square kilometre or 2.7% is settled (buildings or roads), 0.03 km² (7.4 acre) or 0.2% is either rivers or lakes and 0.17 square kilometre or 1.1% is unproductive land.

Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 1.4% and transportation infrastructure made up 1.2%. Out of the forested land, 25.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2.5% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 6.9% is used for growing crops and 50.0% is pastures and 10.9% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is in lakes.

The municipality is located in the Le Locle district. It was formed in 1875 when Brot-Dessus and Plamboz merged, and in 1888 when the municipal corporations
Bürgergemeinde
The Bürgergemeinde is a statutory corporation in public law in Switzerland...

 of Brot-Dessus and Plamboz merged. It consists of the village of Brot-Plamboz and the hamlets
Hamlet (place)
A hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. Historically, when a hamlet became large enough to justify building a church, it was then classified as a village...

 of Les Petits-Ponts and Le Joratel.

Coat of arms

The blazon
Blazon
In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image...

 of the municipal coat of arms
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...

 is Azure, issuant from a Bridge Argent masoned Sable between the initials B and P and between a Pine tree Vert in dexter and a Peat stack Sable in sinister a Rake and a Fork in saltire crossed by a Scythe palewise all of Argent.

Demographics

Brot-Plamboz has a population of . , 2.7% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010 ) the population has changed at a rate of -0.8%. It has changed at a rate of -6.6% due to migration and at a rate of 5.1% due to births and deaths.

Most of the population speaks French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 (253 or 99.2%) as their first language with the rest speaking German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....



, the population was 49.6% male and 50.4% female. The population was made up of 125 Swiss men (49.2% of the population) and 1 (0.4%) non-Swiss men. There were 127 Swiss women (50.0%) and 1 (0.4%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 126 or about 49.4% were born in Brot-Plamboz and lived there in 2000. There were 81 or 31.8% who were born in the same canton, while 30 or 11.8% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 13 or 5.1% were born outside of Switzerland.

, children and teenagers (0-19 years old) make up 27.5% of the population, while adults (20-64 years old) make up 63.1% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 9.4%.

, there were 109 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 123 married individuals, 17 widows or widowers and 6 individuals who are divorced.

, there were 94 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.6 persons per household. There were 23 households that consist of only one person and 12 households with five or more people. , a total of 92 apartments (66.2% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 33 apartments (23.7%) were seasonally occupied and 14 apartments (10.1%) were empty.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Politics

In the 2007 federal election
Swiss federal election, 2007
Elections to the Swiss Federal Assembly, the federal parliament of Switzerland, were held on Sunday, 21 October 2007. In a few cantons, a second round of the elections to the Council of States was held on 11 November, 18 November, and 25 November 2007...

 the most popular party was the SVP
Swiss People's Party
The Swiss People's Party , also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre , is a conservative political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Toni Brunner, but spearheaded by Christoph Blocher, the party is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 58 members of the National Council and 6 of...

 which received 29.97% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the LPS Party
Liberal Party of Switzerland
The Liberal Party of Switzerland was a party with economically liberal policies. It was known as a party of the upper class. On 1 January 2009 it merged with the larger Free Democratic Party to establish FDP.The Liberals....

 (21.82%), the FDP
FDP.The Liberals
FDP.The Liberals is a classical liberal political party in Switzerland. It is the joint-largest party in the Federal Council, third-largest party in the National Council, and second-largest in the Council of States....

 (19.71%) and the SP
Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland is the largest centre-left political party in Switzerland....

 (13.68%). In the federal election, a total of 124 votes were cast, and the voter turnout
Voter turnout
Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

 was 62.9%.

Economy

, Brot-Plamboz had an unemployment rate of 2.7%. , there were 74 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 31 businesses involved in this sector. 47 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 4 businesses in this sector. 7 people were employed in the tertiary sector, with 4 businesses in this sector. There were 149 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 43.6% of the workforce.

the total number of full-time equivalent
Full-time equivalent
Full-time equivalent , is a unit to measure employed persons or students in a way that makes them comparable although they may work or study a different number of hours per week. FTE is often used to measure a worker's involvement in a project, or to track cost reductions in an organization...

 jobs was 109. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 60, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 43 of which 2 or (4.7%) were in manufacturing and 41 (95.3%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 6. In the tertiary sector; 4 or 66.7% were in a hotel or restaurant, 1 was a technical professional or scientist, 1 was in education.

, there were 27 workers who commuted into the municipality and 65 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net exporter of workers, with about 2.4 workers leaving the municipality for every one entering. Of the working population, 7.4% used public transportation to get to work, and 45.6% used a private car.

Religion

From the , 23 or 9.0% were Roman Catholic, while 150 or 58.8% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church
Swiss Reformed Church
The Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Bern , St...

. Of the rest of the population, there were 5 members of an Orthodox church
Orthodox Christianity
The term Orthodox Christianity may refer to:* the Eastern Orthodox Church and its various geographical subdivisions...

 (or about 1.96% of the population), and there were 66 individuals (or about 25.88% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. 37 (or about 14.51% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....

 or atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

, and 7 individuals (or about 2.75% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Brot-Plamboz about 83 or (32.5%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 12 or (4.7%) have completed additional higher education (either university or a Fachhochschule
Fachhochschule
A Fachhochschule or University of Applied Sciences is a German type of tertiary education institution, sometimes specialized in certain topical areas . Fachhochschulen were founded in Germany and later adopted by Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Greece...

). Of the 12 who completed tertiary schooling, 66.7% were Swiss men, 33.3% were Swiss women.

In the canton of Neuchâtel most municipalities provide two years of non-mandatory kindergarten
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

, followed by five years of mandatory primary education. The next four years of mandatory secondary education is provided at thirteen larger secondary schools, which many students travel out of their home municipality to attend. The kindergarten in Brot-Plamboz is combined with Les Ponts-de-Martel
Les Ponts-de-Martel
Les Ponts-de-Martel is a municipality in the district of Le Locle in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.-Geography:Les Ponts-de-Martel has an area, , of . Of this area, or 59.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 30.5% is forested...

. During the 2010-11 school year, there were 2 kindergarten classes with a total of 34 students between the municipalities. In the same year, there was one primary class with a total of 16 students.

, there were 7 students in Brot-Plamboz who came from another municipality, while 39 residents attended schools outside the municipality.
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