Bebyggede

Bebyggede is a Norwegian adjective used in geography, urban planning and land-use contexts to describe areas characterized by built structures and human settlement. The word comes from bebygge, meaning to build up or settle, and bebyggelse meaning settlement or development. In practice, bebygde areal or bebygde områder refers to land where buildings, roads and other infrastructure predominate, as opposed to agricultural land, forests or bare ground.

In statistics and planning documents, bebyggede områder are used to classify the degree of urbanization. The term is closely related to tettbygd (high-density built-up areas), spredt bebyggelse (scattered development) and ubygd (undeveloped). The concept is applied to cities, towns, suburbs and industrial zones, and it is common in mapping and land-use databases.

In Norwegian usage, bebyggde areal may be described in terms of density, height of structures, and planning status. Cartographers differentiate bebyggede områder from other land uses on maps by shading or labeling accordingly. The term also appears in other Scandinavian languages with cognate forms: Swedish bebyggd and Danish bebyggede.

Note: bebyggede is a descriptive term, relative to context and classification schemes; it does not define a single universal category, but a broad notion of human-built land cover.