I thought all cities in Switzerland were curious rural-urban hybrids.

I always thought of Switzerland as a city,small one ,with some parkland between,few pond,and creeks

Vote on WHAT ? The sunshine ?

If you mean how they reorganised things in their Canton, they DID vote on this, even twice

All news is local news

Go live above the 60th parallel for a winter and then return to the glorious and abundant sun during the 'winter' here.

Well, the "upper" parts of Glarus are comparable to the "above the 60th parallel" regions in regard to sunshine or rather the lack of it

Interesting is that Glarus Nord has 17'000, Glarus (Zentrum) 13'000 and Glarus Süd 10'000 inhabitants, which shows that the Northern area, open towards the Zürichsee and the Walensee and relatively industrial, of course is part of that Canton Glarus but also part of the Sargans-Rapperswil area

I find it hard to believe that it's completely dark for 18-20 hours per day down here. I'm not talking 'gloomy' or 'overcast' but DARK as in no sun at all. I think in recent years, due to lack of snow and it being overcast that one December only clocked 20 hours of visible sunlight during the entire month.

To me, a city is a place where you can go for a long walk every day, and see something interesting every five minutes at least. NYC is a city, San Francisco is a city, Buenos Aires is a city, London is definitely a city, even Stockholm is a city. They can surprise you and feed your imagination, if only you let them. In comparison, a place where you always have to know the address of anything interesting, and drive 30+ minutes to get there (such as my home town Brisbane, or - pardon me - Atlanta) are not cities in my vocabulary. They are just gigantic industrial areas surrounded by gigantic suburbia. They might evolve to cities in the long run, but I suspect that it may take centuries.

Glarus Nord definitely fulfils that criterion.

Yes, in Switzerland they call that a Wanderweg.